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 minimum of 16 collapsed under the Taliban. And Iraq's 2025 law handed the age to religious courts, whose reading can go as low as nine.

The three mechanisms¶

Yemen — a legal vacuum. In 1999, parliament repealed the minimum marriage age (then 15). Every reform attempt since (2009, 2014) has failed. There is no statutory minimum at all, and Yemen is nearly alone in the world in this. The case of Nujood Ali made Yemen the global symbol of the problem. She was married at nine or ten and divorced in 2008 at age ten [VERIFIED]
Afghanistan — a collapsed floor. Before 2021 the Civil Code set the age at 16 for girls, and a 2009 law criminalized marriage under 15. Under the Taliban neither is enforced. Marriage eligibility is now 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. That reading 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. Instead 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. Yemen's rate of ~9% before 15 is the starkest (DHS 2013) [ESTIMATE via UNICEF/DHS/MICS]. These rates are serious but mid-tier globally. They fall 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. It affects ~1 in 5 young women worldwide (~640 million alive today). It spans 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 is why these three countries 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). It is not a monolithic cultural endorsement [DOCUMENTED].

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