On January 21, 2025, the Iraqi parliament enacted a new law that legalized girls as young as nine to marry and gave permission to the country’s religious authorities to organize various family matters such as marriage, divorce, and child custody. The new law overturns the 1950s law that bans the marriage of any child under the age of 18. There has been significant backlash from women’s rights organizations and Iraqi MPs who have argued that the new law legalizes child rape. Activists also reported that they were particularly concerned with retroactive implementations of the law to impact previous court decisions on alimony and custody, further exacerbating the women’s and children’s human rights crisis in Iraq.