NCRI – On Sunday December 11th, 2016, the state-run newspaper, Shargh admitted to the disaster of child marriage in the country. The text was entitled “Children do not get married; they are traded instead.” The issue was discussed in a formal seminar on the topic of child marriage.
Shargh newspaper also wrote:”currently 43 thousand of those children that get married are aged 10 to 15 and 2 thousand of them are separated or divorced from their spouses. This is just part of a report that has been presented at the seminar on child marriage. The seminar was held in the Amphitheater Hall of the University of Science and Technology to investigate the causes and consequences of child marriage in the marginalized neighborhoods of the country.
The Director of an organization (known as Imam Ali), Zahra Rahimi wrote:”in most of these marriages, the family of a girl trades their daughter in exchange for a house. As the news come through, a 10-year-old girl has married to a 60-year-old man in Sistan and Baluchestan Province. In this marriage, the girl does not expect to be loved but she has only made a deal with the man to receive money.”
Zahra Rahimi added:”in marginalized families, as the children start a married life, they intend to have children in order to prepare them for work.”
The participants of this meeting frankly admitted that the number of child marriages and divorces increased by 10 thousand cases in 2015, comparing to 2014.
A member of the Judicial and Legal Commission of the Iranian Parliament also said that 12 to 13 thousand children got married unofficially without any registration in offices. In some cases, the actual age of girls is not correctly recorded, i.e. they are registered older than their actual age.
Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar in response to child marriage in Iran said:”according to the law, the marriage of children is prohibited in the registration offices. In addition to that, the penal enforcement will be considered for those registration offices that violate the law. They shall be suspended from their jobs. Unfortunately, the child marriage is still registered in the offices although it is against the law.
The law allows marriage for a young girl provided that the court approves. As it seems, there are 43 thousand child marriages of those who are 10 to 15 years old and they are registered without any compliance with the law and existing regulations (without court’s approval).”
The main cause of child marriage is poverty and unemployment in Iran. As some officials stated, the rate of unemployment in some disadvantaged cities and provinces reaches by 30 to 40 percent.