Αγαπητοί μου φίλοι είμαι πολύ χαρούμενη να μοιραστώ μαζί σας ότι ο φρικτός νόμος στο Ιρακ για τον οποίο έκανα κι εγώ ένα ψήφισμα και πολλοί από σας το υπογράψατε και σας ευχαριστώ, ΔΕΝ ΝΟΜΙΜΟΠΟΙΗΘΗΚΕ. Εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες μηνύματα είχαν κατακλύσει τους φορείς της χώρας. Όλοι μαζί μπορούμε και κάνουμε τη διαφορά.

Δείτε το μήνυμα που μου έστειλαν και μοιραστείτε το κι εσείς με τους φίλους σας.

Dear Maria,

We’re getting in touch because you recently took action to help stop Forced Child Marriage in Iraq.

There has been some good news on this issue and we wanted to share it with you: the Jaafari Personal Status Law (which would have legalised Forced Child Marriage in Iraq) was not approved by Parliament in the lead up to the 30 April election¹ as we feared, having been approved by the Council of Ministers in February².

The Walk Free community responded to these shocking developments in unprecedented style: sending 645,157 emails to Iraqi leaders in total. We believe this strong support played a role in delaying the passage of this law.

Will you celebrate this progress with us? Iraq is going through a very difficult time at the moment but we must not lose focus on protecting children from forced marriage. Spreading this good news will help keep attention on the movement against Forced Child Marriage and energise our friends and family to join the next stage of the campaign.

I’ll share on Facebook.

I’ll share on Twitter.

We believe the massive groundswell of support for ending child marriage played a key role in preventing the law from being presented to Parliament before the Government dissolved, and this lost our opponents a key opportunity. While the new Government is forming we’ll be closely monitoring this issue and planning the next stages of the campaign. We want to build on this momentum to ensure the Jaafari Personal Status Law is rejected permanently.

Together, we helped prevent Forced Child Marriage from being legalised at a critical time in Iraqi politics. Please share this success with others so our movement is stronger than ever and ready for the challenge to come. 

Thank you for your support so far.

In solidarity,

Debra, Sarah, Joanna, Jayde, Kate and the Walk Free Team

P.S. On Twitter? Follow Walk Free!