THE CRIME OF FORCED MARRIAGE A STUDY FROM A LEGAL AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
Authors: AL-OBAIDI Bushra Salman Hussain 
Published: June 2021

Forced marriage is a form of marriage that takes place without the consent of the parties, or is done under coercion by one of the parties to the contract. The difference revolves around between compulsory marriage and regular marriage, as the latter depends on the agreement and consent of the parties to the contract, and with the consent of the parents of both parties. As for forced marriage, it obligates one or both parties to the contract to accept, even if it is necessary to use psychological pressure or physical violence. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the rate of forced marriage, which has reached more than 20 percent, according to statistics from personal status courts, while the percentage of victims of these marriages is more than 40 percent of women, indicating that most divorce cases are among young people who were forced to marry before reaching the legal age. The phenomenon was very small during the nineties, but it increased significantly after the US occupation of Iraq in 2003. There are legal treatments for the phenomenon, through declarations, the agreements that Iraq joined or ratified, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil, Political and Social Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence and Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, all of which contain texts stating not to be forced into marriage. Forced for whatever reason. The problem lies in the failure to criminalize the perpetrators of forced marriage by the penal laws and legislations. The Iraqi Penal Code of 1969 did not include any criminalization of it, but the Personal Status Law No. 188 of 1959 mentioned the penalty of imprisonment for the person who is forced to marry if he is the relative of the victim of the first degree, and imprisonment for a period Not more than 10 years, if otherwise. One of the most common types of forced marriage is reciprocal, or by presenting a woman as a substitute for the dowry, whether it is a sister or a daughter, and there is another type of marriage, which is a blood allowance, that is to offer a woman as compensation for the harm that befell the other clan in the event that one of her clan members kills One of the members of that clan, and there is a gift marriage, and such marriages had receded. There is kidnapping marriage, which is widespread in one of the sects and is criminalized by the Penal Code with life imprisonment for its perpetrator. In addition to the problem of marriage outside the courts with the approval of a cleric, and this matter is not related to individual cases, but in tens of thousands of cases throughout the country. About 9,800 cases of marriage outside the courts were recorded in Baghdad alone during 2017, according to Judicial Council numbers, while about 59,000 were registered. A situation throughout Iraq, with the exception of the Kurdistan region, a large part of which is the marriage of minors (under the legal age) whose families want to impose a fait accompli on the courts. From all the foregoing, it becomes clear how important the research topic is, as it affects the human rights and freedoms of girls and women and negatively affects the family and society, and thus the security and community peace. The research aims to include detailed texts in the Personal Status Law that include all forms of forced marriage and its material, moral and psychological aspects and all parties and persons in the forced marriage process or the reason for its occurrence and the various cases of its occurrence, as well as addressing legislative contradictions and mitigating or exempting excuses stipulated in the Penal Code, which allow For the perpetrators with impunity. And that the forms of the crime of forced marriage are included with its provisions in the penal code and not in the personal status law, and heavy penalties are imposed on the perpetrators, and that the degree of relationship of the perpetrator to the victim is a reason for the severity of the punishment and not to reduce it, so that the closer the degree, the more severe the punishment