Child marriage is caused by a triangle of concerns: tradition, poverty and the fear that a girl will find a boyfriend. In my experience, tradition is more often the motivation than securing a payment. There’s a stereotype that the families who push their daughters to marry young are poor, but that’s not true. My God, she doesn't even know what's happening to her." This child is too young to know what's going on. This tweet by an Iranian web user reads: "I wish this were a joke. Even worse, the number of underage marriages has actually been going up in recent years, though by a small margin. There are around 40,000 marriages a year in which at least one of the partners is under 15 – and that’s only the marriages that are officially registered. In some villages, if a girl isn’t married at 15, people will think it’s because no one wants her as a wife. A mother who got married at 12 will want the same for her daughter. While child marriage is rare and even taboo in the big cities, in rural regions marrying around 13 or 14 is not that uncommon. There are more child marriages than people think. People are more educated and more aware of the consequences women are more and more independent. The number of child marriages is lower than in 1979. Social attitudes to child marriage have been changing, though. A law passed back in 1925 had set the marriage age at 18 for boys and 15 for girls. Things have been getting worse and worse since the Iranian Revolution 40 years ago. 'There are more child marriages than people think'ĭespite concerted efforts by moderate MPs and social activists to ban child marriage by amending the law, there has been little progress. They can talk to a judge and convince him, or even bribe him.
This loophole in the law means fathers are often able to force their daughters to marry at any age. Apparently in this case Fatima was such a child, as she was unavailable to answer these kinds of questions. Or they’ll ask who is the current president of Iran – or just ask whether they want to get married. To test whether a girl or boy is mature enough for marriage, judges sometimes hold up a banknote and ask them how much it is worth. Judges can rule whether a girl or boy is mature enough to marry. This marriage was cancelled because a local judge made a ruling that 11-year-old Fatima was not “intellectually mature” enough to manage a family. First, the vice president of Iran for Women and Family Affairs tweeted that she was going to pursue the matter then the local public prosecutor annulled the marriage after a ruling by a judge. The images made a strong impression on people, and brought pressure on local and national officials to take action. But this time there’s a video and some photos. There have been other child marriages that have taken place in the last few months. She asked to remain anonymous for this article because she is concerned about the consequences of talking publicly about the issue. “Judges can rule whether a girl or boy is mature enough to marry” Our Observer is an Iranian researcher who follows child marriage issues in Iran. Kamil Ahmadi, an Iranian-British researcher who wrote a book about underage marriage in Iran, was arrested on August 11. While reformist politicians and activists have been fighting for a change to Iran’s marriage laws, they have made little progress and the issue remains sensitive.