400,000 underage girls married off in Iran within decade

TEHRAN, Iran (Kurdistan24) – Within the last decade, over 400,000 girls under the age of 15 were married off in Iran, the country’s official sources reported.

Widening poverty and parents’ desire to control their daughter’s sexuality were cited as common reasons for child marriages.

Females in Iran require their father’s permission to marry regardless of their age.

According to Iranian laws, girls can marry at the age of 13 and boys at 15. 

However, the law also stated with the consent of a parent and a judge’s rule girls can be married off at a much younger age.

The practice has been on the rise in Iran and the United Nations condemned the country for the rising number of young girls forced into marriage.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said Tehran must “repeal all provisions that authorize, condone or lead to child sexual abuse.”

Moreover, the Committee called for the age of sexual consent to be increased from nine-years-old to 16.

The panel said Iran “allows sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years and that other forms of sexual abuse of even young children is not criminalized.” 

The CRC added an increasing number of “girls at the age of 10 years or younger... are subjected to child and forced marriages to much older men.”

The Committee also criticized a law that forced wives “to fulfill sexual needs of their husbands at all times,” stressing it “places child brides at risk of sexual violence, including marital rape.”

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany