The Right to Marriage in Iraqi Constitutional Practice

In recent decades, the family rights landscape in Iraq has undergone significant changes, reflecting the country’s dynamic social development. One of the key aspects of this development is the transformation in the area of the right to marriage. The paper examines the main problems associated with the refusal of the framers of the Iraqi Constitution to include the right to marriage among the constitutional rights. As consequences of this decision, we have identified: 1) the actual consequences associated with the artificial legitimization of forced marriage and the state’s retreat from the positions of counteracting it, stated in the reports on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals; 2) the legal consequences associated with the Supreme Federal Court of Iraq’s reconsideration of the legal nature of the right to marriage through the prism of Sharia norms, which de facto transform it into a legal obligation. Considering that such practice is formally consistent with the provisions of the Constitution of Iraq, when resolving the problem of the diminution of the right to marriage, it is proposed to be guided by international legal norms, which, within the framework of Article 8 of the Constitution, are mandatory for the legal system, and therefore cannot be violated either by the norms of domestic legislation or by the interpretations of the highest judicial authorities. To achieve the research objectives, the author used theoretical methods of dialectical analysis and synthesis, methods of generalization and comparative law (mainly in the retrospective (historical) aspect), and the formal legal method.

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