The past and future of child marriage expectations and regulations

By: Meera Nair

When Goli Kouhkan, an Iranian child-bride sentenced to death for killing her husband, was spared her life earlier this month, headlines spoke of mercy and hope for other Iranian girls. However, this rare reprieve is not representative of a shift in Iran’s stance on child marriages, nor of the wider humanitarian crisis facing the country, and indeed, other parts of the globe. 

Although in Iran, forced marriages are illegal, this has not stopped the ongoing trend of underage girls being partnered with older men. Within Iran, girls can be married from as young as 13 years old or, with paternal or judicial permission, 8 years and 9 months old. This commodification of young girls, treated as chattel which can be traded for a price, plunges them into extreme danger and vulnerability due to there being little to no social or legal protection against intimate partner abuse, such as rape. The true scale of child marriages within the country is unknown, as the National Statistics Centre of Iran stopped publishing information on child marriages, testament to the marginalisation of young girls who become lost to a patriarchal system which relies and insists upon their subjugation and silence. In 2023, it was reported that, on average, there were 135,000 registered marriages involving brides under the age of 18 every year, but even these staggering statistics can be assumed to be an underestimation.

Kouhkan was forced to marry her cousin at age 12, becoming pregnant at 13, a harsh reality for many girls in Iran. Her conviction came after many years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband, from which she could not escape. Kouhkan found her husband beating their 5-year-old son, and when she called her husband’s cousin, Mohammed Abil, to help, a fight broke out, which resulted in his death. 

However, her acquittal was not due to the benevolence of the Iranian government but, instead, due to the payment of “blood-money” to her late husband’s parents, which equated to £70,000. This transactional forgiveness is underpinned by the Iranian law of qisas, meaning ‘retribution in kind’. This law allows the families of victims to seek an equivalent punishment to the injustice their loved one has suffered: whether through execution of the perpetrator or receiving the equivalent monetary value. In 2022, 288 executions were carried out for murder charges based on this law, which is the highest ever recorded. Indeed, this law also extends to juveniles who have been convicted of a crime, as according to Islamic Sharia law, the age of criminal responsibility is 15 lunar years for boys but only 9 for girls. This disparity in age highlights that young girls, effectively sold into marriages against their will, are trapped: acts of self-defence are being treated as adult crimes and being punished accordingly.

Therefore, though Kouhkan’s case should not be dismissed as a redundant event, it cannot be seen as a unanimous symbol that Iran’s stance on child marriages is changing. Instead, her release is a result of fundraising, activism and the specific dynamics of the victim’s family and their stance on forgiveness, which allowed her to be spared death. Not all Iranian women are so fortunate. 

Despite the efforts of Iranian activists advocating for change, child marriage laws within the country remain weak, leaving girls susceptible to abuse and teenage pregnancy, which increases their propensity for death. In 2018, a motion was put forward by the Women's Faction of the Majlis to raise the age of marriage to 16 for girls and 18 for boys. However, this was denied for “contradicting Islamic jurisdiction, current laws and social norms”.

Although in other countries, there has been progress in problem areas such as Belize, Sierra Leone, and Colombia, which have all raised the minimum age of marriage to 18 without exception. Child marriages are still rife globally, as every three seconds, a young girl gets married somewhere in the world. 

It is integral to recognise that this practice is borne out of deep-rooted misogyny, where unmarried young girls and women are viewed as burdens and useless without being attached to a male counterpart.

The violence inflicted on women who find themselves trapped in these marriages is unspeakable and is ignored by governments whose legal frameworks and political priorities systematically deprioritise the safety of women. This is particularly prominent in countries where laws are underpinned by religious doctrine, which usually positions women as subservient to men and thus normalises their suffering.

The road to ending child marriage is long and tumultuous, but can be aided by investing in young women in problem countries and not relegating them as victims of their circumstances. Investing in their education, economic opportunities, and in social interventions such as women’s shelters are all key strides which must be made to break the cycles of abuse rampant in countries such as Iran. Until these structural changes occur, cases like Goli Kouhkan’s cannot be labelled as evidence of progress but rare instances within a system which continues to endanger the lives of young women and girls.

Image: Iranintl