Premarital Counseling
Early and thoughtless marriages lead to family conflicts and violence in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, resulting in high divorce rates. The project on premarital counseling carried out by KHANZAD in cooperation with the Health Directorate and Sulaimania Family Counseling Center aims to counteract this on various levels: through educational offers for young people, by strengthening existing counseling and educational structures, and through the exchange of relevant actors for the institutional and legal anchoring of premarital counseling.
Table of Contents
Background
Conflict and violence in marriage and family as well as an increasing divorce rate, which has stigmatizing consequences especially for women and children, are an acute problem in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Directorate for Combating Violence against Women (DCVAW) recorded over 5,600 cases of domestic violence for the city of Sulaimania in 2021. The divorce rate increased by 58% from 2020 to 2021.
Early and forced marriages as well as a lack of education for young people before marriage are cited by local women’s rights groups and state counseling centers, among others, as causes of violence in the family and marriage. Child marriages, forced marriages or marriages entered into by families according to traditional rites are prohibited by law and court approval is also required for marriages between partners under the age of 18 or for polygamous marriages. However, in many marriages, the law is circumvented by traditional rites of religious authorities.
Family and marital violence is also widespread among Iraqi refugees from provinces in central Iraq. In the mainly Arab-Sunni places of origin of the internally displaced persons, there is still no legal ban on child and forced marriages or violence against women. In addition, economic hardship, social conflicts and psychological stress translate into a high prevalence of child and forced marriages and sexualized violence in the refugee camps in the region. This development is also reflected in the host communities in the Kurdistan Region.
Marriage in the Kurdistan Region is fundamentally a family matter: families influence the choice of partner and, especially in rural areas and educationally disadvantaged groups, young people are forced into marriages with partners from the extended family or with people they do not know.
In view of the ongoing violent conflicts in Iraq, the economic crisis and the associated lack of educational and career prospects, hopelessness and a lack of prospects are also widespread, especially among young people. This and the taboo on premarital contact with the opposite sex outside the family, family conflicts and the general silence about sexuality are driving many young people into early and thoughtless marriages.
Another development that forces young women in particular into unwanted sexual relationships and marriages is the use of social media for threats and blackmail. The platforms are used to publish photos and/or fake posts by women or to put them under pressure to publish them.
The lack of information among partners about their rights and issues such as sexuality or gender-specific roles, the high number of cases of violence and conflicts in marriage and the family as well as the rising divorce rate affect all social classes in society. The existing premarital and family counselling facilities at the Sulaimania Health Department and the DCVAW Family Counselling Centre are overburdened, insufficiently professionally trained and poorly networked in view of the high demand for education, counselling and awareness-raising on marriage and family-related issues. Against this backdrop, civil society women’s groups, the family courts, the DCVAW counselling centres and the Sulaimania Health Department are calling for institutionalized, qualified structures for premarital counselling for young people.
The Project
In cooperation with family courts, the Department of Health (DOH), and the Directorate for Combating Violence Against Women (DCVAW), KHANZAD developed a multi-level project that combines the education of young people and multipliers in the province of Sulaimania with the strengthening of counseling competencies in state counseling centers and their supra-regional networking with ministerial and parliamentary decision-makers in order to establish mandatory pre-marital counseling on an institutional and legal level.
The project includes the following activities:
- In seminars, pupils and students from public schools and universities are informed about their rights, the challenges of marriage, partnership-based interaction, and the existing services for pre-marital as well as marriage and family counseling.
- Social workers and teachers are sensitized to the early detection of forced and early marriages, trained in basic competencies for pre-marital counseling, and familiarized with referral pathways to (pre-marital) counseling. (Micro level)
- The existing structures for pre-marital counseling provided by the DOH and family counseling by the DCVAW in Sulaimania are being strengthened by offering counselors workshops for further training, professional consultation, and supervision. Members of the so-called Peace Committees at the Family Counseling Center in Sulaimania receive advanced training in qualified pre-marital counseling for young people and in conflict counseling for cases of domestic violence. In addition, the counseling centers receive logistical support to expand their reach and capacities. (Meso level)
- The networking and exchange between relevant actors – family courts, DOH, and DCVAW family counseling centers – is initially promoted at the provincial level and later at the regional level. Based on the joint development of recommendations, political decision-makers are to be involved, and initial steps taken toward the legal anchoring of mandatory pre-marital counseling for young people. (Macro level)
Overall, the multi-level project aims to reduce domestic and family violence through pre-marital counseling, the strengthening of relevant counseling structures, and steps toward the legal institutionalization of pre-marital counseling. Another long-term impact is the destigmatization of sexuality and partnership as well as the use of counseling services. In the long term, this may help to weaken the strong influence of religious and traditional authorities on partner selection and marriage and reduce forced and early marriages.
