Iraq: Personal Status Law Amendment Sets Back Women’s Rights

By Human Rights Watch

(Beirut) – After months of legal and political wrangling, an amendment to Iraq’s Personal Status Law that entered into force on February 17, 2025, violates women’s and girls’ rights to equality before the law and puts them at risk of other abuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Persistent pressure and advocacy by women’s rights groups partly reduced the amendment’s harm by retaining provisions for the minimum age of marriage, child custody, and polygamy, but the amended law contains other provisions that threaten women’s and girls’ rights.Under the new law, couples concluding a marriage…

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