Opinion on: http://www.newsweek.com/un-condemns-iran-increase-child-brides-young-10-423435
“A United Nations panel warned on Thursday of a rising number of young girls forced into marriage in Iran, calling on the Islamic republic to carry out stringent reforms on laws that allow girls as young as nine to wed.”
When a kid is nine years old, they imagine to go to school. They imagine about running around the swings after school and chasing after butterflies. But instead...they are being chased upon by the society. The United Nation recently performed a critical analyzation of Iran’s demographics and normally the country in running in general. As for their results, the country barely is making any progress but stepping more towards bad. “The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said that Tehran must “repeal all provisions that authorize, condone or lead to child sexual abuse” and called for the age of sexual consent to be increased from nine years old to 16.” Iran basically was one of those countries whose citizens might be in the face of dark hold if child marriages didn’t stop there. Child marriages was flying off the roof of Iran because of the more economic and ruling status that the country itself possesses.
United Nation’s main goal in now to help iran out from the bad situation they are currently in and advise them new ways to implement new ideas in their systems. The panel said that 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 minimum age of marriage in Iran is also nine years old, according to The Independent. I believe that the U.N. should more focus on what is the root cause behind child marriage and try to work on that idea and not straightly implement new rules which’ll prohibit child marriages is such places like Tehran. I personally believe that the new laws/rules will soon get demolished by the citizens of Tehran and they won’t have improvement in general/ Rather than jumping from nine years to sixteen years for minimum age for child marriage, they should first try to solve the main issue that Iran is facing. Strict ruling might put a different facade than we hope it to face.
Religious concerns becomes a huge deal from here. Since I am a Muslim, I do understand how strict our religion Islam is and what kind of ideas we implement. Some of our ideas are misinterpreted since it’s getting passed down from culture to culture. Some blames the poor health of Iran on the child marriage issue is because Islam clearly accepts child marriages and of course it accepts multiple marriages. Since most of us have that kind of view about Islam, it puts the religion in an uncomfortable stage of falseness. islam only implements and support those ideas if there is such need for such marriages. There are lots of rules and regulations one have to go through in order to marry someone that young age. On another hand, a husband can’t just go around and marry womens. The husband clearly needs wife's permission in order to do cuh act as stated in the Quran. Addition of religion in such sensitive makes the topic much harder to deal with which makes the resolution of the problem to be fragile.
The CRC added that an increasing number of “girls at the age of 10 years or younger... are subjected to child and forced marriages to much older men” and criticized a law that makes it necessary for wives “to fulfill sexual needs of their husbands at all times,” stressing that it “places child brides at risk of sexual violence, including marital rape.” Sex trafficking is a huge issue that some of the countries have to face. Even though sex trafficking is illegal, it becomes legal as the partners engage in a “fake” marriage. After dongs tons of research behind child marriage, I could come to a conclusion stating that the bride's parents supports the “fake” marriage with the groom in order to earn valuable expenses from the groom's side. As soon as the grroms exual desire is complete, the bride clearly becomes useless and the groom starts to look for other attractions. The bride now is being used as maid of the family while facing sexual violence at an early age of nine. Thee kind of situations makes me wonder why U.N isn’t strictly looking at these issues even though they are right in front of them but just forcing laws upon a country.
In conclusion, I understand U.N is condemned with the Iran's increasement of child marriage and is trying to help them out. But, what U.N is missing is that to really dig into the issue and try to solve the main root of the issue. If we jump to conclusions that high marriage age will solve the problem, than we are wrong. There are many third world countries that have higher marriage age restrictions but there are still tons of child marriages that are going on. We need to look at those, and learn. Strict rules isn’t going to solve the problem...but to understand the root of the problem will do it.
Sources
* Moore, Jack. "U.N. CONDEMNS IRAN FOR INCREASE IN CHILD BRIDES AS YOUNG AS 10." Newsweek. Accessed February 06, 2016. http://www.newsweek.com/un-condemns-iran-increase-child-brides-young-10-423435.
