Polygamy incentives MP submits new amended proposal: sources

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) An Iraqi female parliamentarian who had called to disburse incentives for polygamy has now submitted a new amended bill, media sources were quoted saying.

According to NRT network, Jamila al-Ebeidi submitted a proposal to amend the “personal status” law that allows men to marry three extra wives provided that the additional wives are above 30 years of age.

Ebeidi, a representative of Nineveh province, began collecting colleagues’ signatures to submit the motion to the council’s presidency, NRT quoted the sources saying, adding that there was relative support for the proposal.

The earlier version of Ebeidi’s bill had conditioned that additional wives be widowes, or divorced, or above 30. The amended document sets the age limit as an obligatory, rather than optional, condition.

“We should remind (women) MPs of a forgotten right….it is polygamy for which we harassed men despite increasing spinsterhood and divorced women who now exceed four million,” Ebeidi said in a press conference inside the parliament’s building back in March, suggesting financial bonuses for polygamous men.

Iraqi laws disallow polygamy if it is “feared” that the husband would not ensure that his wives would not enjoy their marital rights equally. The law, however, leaves approval of polygamy to judges’ discretion.

Iraq recorded more than 14000 marriages as opposed to nearly 4000 divorces in June, the country’s Supreme Judicial Council said in a statistic released on Monday.