Deutsche Welle: Poverty driven marriages in Iran

In the province of Khorasan Razavi, northeast Iran, some 6,700 Iranian women have been registered as marrying foreign nationals, without having official marriage certificates. More than 20,000 children have been born to these marriages also without any official birth certificates. All of these happens due to poverty and needlessness, officials say.
The number of Iranian women marrying foreign nationals in this province is estimated at 12,000, of which to this day 5,300 cases of have been registered, said Mohammad Ajami, Director General of Foreign Nationals and Migrants. Ajami estimates the number of children from Iranian women marrying with Afghan men in Mashhad as 20,000, describing them as “children without registered IDs”. Poverty is one of the main reasons women are giving in to temporary marriages.