Iraq to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

[Waitingforfriday75]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/iraq-poised-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-for-girls-to-nine/

Posted here as it gets the most traffic. This is by far the worst news I’ve heard all year. Imagine at the age you were meant to start secondary school instead being forced to marry and have sex with an older man. Completely disgusting!!!

It's old news though. Meanwhile there are reports women in America are stockpiling abortion pills. That's more current news. Why would a right wing paper 'distract' with old news eh?

And this is a surprise to people?

So it won't happen because of mass protests by everyone? India is changing their rape culture via protests.

www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/iraq-reject-changes-to-personal-status-law-which-would-allow-child-marriage-and-further-entrench-discrimination/

But the current age of 11 is horrific, even if 9 is 'only' a proposal at this stage.

I agree, Western governments should have the courage to call out countries with anything other than equal rights for women.

@Batmanisaplaceinturkey you could say that at least they are available to stockpile. Contraception or abortion isn't available at all in many countries.

How many women voted for current regimes outside of the USA and Europe?

Bit of a red herring, most non Muslim countries aren't great for women's rights either. Even in Western Europe, women's rights have been a recent development.

Racist religious stereotypes will not help. Nor will war.

I think it says in the article current age of consent is 18?

I didn’t know about this until the Telegraph reported it & it’s absolutely disgusting.

Attempts to try to minimise it by saying it’s old news or whatever is horrible also. What if it were your daughter or even yourself as a 9 year old? Why is the whole world not appalled by this?

Germany will lower the age of consent to 6 in some circumstances?? I have googled and it seems it's 14 there. What do you mean by 6 in some circumstances?

Agree that statement needs to be explained @Ponoka7 as there would be a huge outcry if true.

There's a ban in US foreign aid programmes providing contraception or family planning advice or supporting health services that do this. This has resulted in a reduction of these services being available in many developing countries. Clearly women in these countries did not vote for the US restricting their reproductive rights

I just googled lowest age of concern in the world and it’s currently Angola & the Philippines at 12 years old.

Not Germany! Their age of consent is 14 as long as the relationship isn’t exploitative.

The west stays silent as Afghan women are forbidden to even speak to one another and accept the conditions imposed by the Afghanistani government on the involvement of Western females in any aspect of work with them.

WHY on earth do we think other misogynistic and appalling regimes won't be emboldened or inspired to degrade women?

It’s what is said on the Wikipedia page. There is no additional clarification.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_by_country

To add, in the context of rapidly spreading HIV this policy obviously had extremely detrimental effects. Rather than providing condoms and safe sex advice, the US response in sub Saharan African countries was to discourage condom use and preach abstinence. Thus making the situation much worse. US programmes, being generally well funded, have a disproportionate amount of influence there

Well this is fairly old news, I was surprised few people were bothered about it a few weeks ago.

The current age of consent is 18 in theory, however like the UK I imagine this is fairly meaningless in real terms.

How does giving support to Israel help these girls in Iraq?

Obviously, 9 is ridiculously low and would be 'legalising' rape of children.

However, I wonder how keen they would be for 9yo boys to be sexually active too? Are the similar age boy-children and their 'rights' in their consideration as well - or is this just a case of older men determined to abuse girls to get their jollies?

Even at a 'standard' western age of consent, I'm still very wary indeed of mature men in the UK going after 16yo girls.

However much they insist "It's all legal!" and make those with an issue with it out to be crazy prudes, it's a huge red flag to me when significantly older men are so keen to eschew relations with women of a similar age - or at least fully mature adults - In favour of girls who are still technically children - legal or not.

And didn’t a young woman/teen in Iran commit suicide over correct dress and hair showing just the other day?

I’m sorry, I agree with Kemi.

For those asking the relevance of Israel. They are pivotal in the destroying of these horrendous islamist extremist groups in the likes or Iran.
It is indeed a travesty that we do not hear more about this Islamist extremism that is dominating the Middle East. Even in ‘safer’ countries like the UAE, it only recently became possible for women to drive alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent_in_Europe

No clarification or citation so I'm inclined to disbelieve it. The link above contains more detailed information regarding Germany and no mention is made of possible exceptions regarding 6 year olds.

Was the US war in Iraq not enough for you? Incidentally women's rights were better before they got involved.

You think supporting a genocide will help, how?