How young can girls legally be married in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen?¶

Short answer: in all three, there is effectively no real floor — by three different routes. Yemen has had no legal minimum age since 1999; Afghanistan's 16-year minimum collapsed under the Taliban; and Iraq's 2025 law handed the age to religious courts whose interpretation can reach as low as nine.

The three mechanisms¶

Yemen — a legal vacuum. Parliament repealed the minimum marriage age (then 15) in 1999, and every reform attempt since (2009, 2014) has failed. There is no statutory minimum at all — nearly alone in the world. The case of Nujood Ali, married at nine or ten and divorced in 2008 at age ten, made Yemen the global symbol of the problem [VERIFIED]
Afghanistan — a collapsed floor. Before 2021 the Civil Code set 16 for girls and a 2009 law criminalized marriage under 15. Under the Taliban both are unenforced; marriage eligibility is tied to puberty, and a decree reported in May 2026 reportedly treats a girl's silence as consent [DOCUMENTED; the 2026 decree is recent and flagged for continued verification]
Iraq — a 2025 rollback. The 1959 law set the floor at 18 (15 with a judge's consent). A January 2025 amendment lets couples opt into Shia Ja'afari religious jurisdiction, whose interpretation can permit marriage at puberty — read by some clerics as nine [DOCUMENTED]. The precise wording matters: an explicit "age 9" clause was dropped from the draft after protests, so the law does not print an age — it delegates the floor to clerical interpretation that can reach nine. Accurate: "Iraq handed the minimum age to religious courts." Not accurate: "Iraq legalized marriage at nine" [DISPUTED — the enacted floor is interpretation-dependent]

How common is it?¶

Roughly 28% (Iraq), 29% (Afghanistan), and 30–32% (Yemen) of young women were married before 18 — with Yemen's ~9% before 15 the starkest (DHS 2013) [ESTIMATE via UNICEF/DHS/MICS]. These are serious but mid-tier globally — below the world's highest-prevalence countries (Niger ~76%, CAR and Chad ~61%, Bangladesh ~51%; India has the largest absolute number).

The honest framing¶

Child marriage is a global, cross-religious phenomenon — ~1 in 5 young women worldwide (~640 million alive today), spanning Muslim-majority Niger, Christian-majority CAR, Hindu-majority India, Latin America, and parts of the United States that permitted sub-18 marriage into the 2020s. The drivers are poverty, conflict, weak legal floors, and gender inequality — not one faith. That context is why these three matter here for their legal trajectory — a rollback, a collapse, and a standing vacuum — not for uniquely high prevalence. And in each country the practice is contested from within (Baghdad protests, Afghan women's networks, Yemen's Safe Age of Marriage campaign), not a monolithic cultural endorsement [DOCUMENTED].

Go deeper: Women's Rights Across the Middle East · Atrocities Audit · Religious Freedom & Minorities