A conservative coalition in Iraq has pushed proposals to lower the legal age of marriage for girls to just nine-years-old, sparking fierce backlash from activists and rights groups.
Protesters demonstrated in Baghdad this week to express their outrage at changes that would allow aspects of personal status matters to be legislated by religious sects, rather than the courts.
With many Iraqi marriages conducted informally and left unregistered, the revisions would allow figures from Sunni and Shia religious sects to finalise unions between people in law. Mail.
