IRAN: Hundreds of thousands of girls under 15 forced into marriage in past decade

NCRI – Nearly 420000 Iranian girls under the age of 15 have been wed mainly to older men, some more than four times their age, over the past decade in Iran, officials of the Iranian regime have acknowledged.

In the last Iranian calendar year (ending March 20, 2015), at least 40404 Iranian girls under the age of 15 were married, the head of the state’s Social Emergency Coordination Center said this week.

Majid Arjmandi also said that in recent years there were at least 10 cases of girls under the age of 10 who had been married off to older men, the state-run Shahrvand newspaper wrote on Tuesday.

At least 360 Iranian girls under the age of 14 have also been married to older men in recent years, Arjmandi added.

According to official statistics for the past decade 419488 girls under the age of 15 were married off to older men.

Despite the shocking admission by officials of the regime, the real number of young Iranian girls who are married off each year to older men is believed to be far higher.

Ms. Farideh Karimi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and a human rights activist, on Friday described the Iranian regime's marriage laws as "institutionalized pedophilia."

"The mullahs' regime is trying to present its institutionalized pedophilia to the international community under the guise of national culture and customs; yet its fundamentalist laws have nothing to do with Iranian culture and are based on a fundamentalist interpretation of religion. The mullahs’ laws in Iran mirror the practices of ISIS (Daesh) against young girls."

Ms. Karimi pointed out that while Iran is a state party to the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 1041 of Iran’s Civil Code allows girls to marry at the age of 13, and boys at the age of 15, and furthermore allows girls to be married at a younger age with approval from a court.

The Iranian regime's Guardian Council, made up of six clerics and six jurists, in October 2013 approved a bill which allows men to marry their adopted daughters.