In Iran, child marriage isn’t merely a whispered rural custom; it’s a practice that can breathe because the law gives it room. A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report tells the story of “Leila,” married at ten to a fifteen-year-old boy—an arrangement delivered to her in the night, a ring placed on her finger like a stamp. She describes the aftermath not as romance or “tradition,” but as fear, pain, and a body treated as if it were already spoken for.

The scandal here is not that bad people exist; it’s that systems can normalize the bad. The report states that marriage is legal for girls at 13 with parental consent, and that younger girls can be married with a judge’s permission (and that the legal age cited for boys is 15). It also cites 37,000 underage marriages registered in the last Iranian year ending in March (as of 2016), while noting that unregistered unions mean the true number is likely higher.

A society’s moral temperature shows up in what it excuses, and what it calls “inevitable.” The piece reports that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Iran to raise the marriage age and expressed concern that the legal framework permits sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years, alongside gaps in criminalization of other sexual abuse against very young children. This isn’t “culture” in the harmless sense; it’s power arranged into a rite, with a child paying the cost.

 Bibliography 📚

  • Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Radio Farda), “Childhood’s End: Forced Into Marriage At Age 10 In Iran” (Nov. 17, 2016).