child marriages are unregistered.23 In January 2020, the Secretary General highlighted that “the Government [of the Islamic Republic of Iran] expressed the view that setting the minimum age of marriage regardless of the cultural context would increase unregistered marriages.”24 The Iranian Government established a National Body for the Convention of the Rights of the Child (NBCRC), which has the responsibility “to set up plans and programs to promote the rights of the child and the respect of their character” and to monitor and assess the implementation of the rights of children in the Islamic Republic of Iran.25 The body is headed by the Minister of Justice, who appoints most of its members and officers, and includes three NGO representatives among its 23 members.26 During the country’s 2016 CRC review, the National Body listed its main achievements, notably the holding of “specialised meetings on the role of religious leaders in preventing violence against children”, including early and forced marriage. 27 The National Body also listed the achievements of its working groups, notably its Legal and Judiciary working group, which conducted “analyses of the ways to end early marriage”, and its Support and Coordination working group which carried out an “analysis of the different dimensions of supporting children who are deprived of education and are victims of early marriage”. 28 There is no readily available information that might indicate whether these achievements have been impactful. In its national report to the Universal Periodic Review in 2019, the Islamic Republic of Iran stated that it carried out “human rights training for judges, judicial officers and administrative staff on the rights of the child”.29 However, there is no readily available information on the content of such trainings and whether they contained sessions on the harmful effects of early marriage on the physical and mental health and well-being of girls. Despite various bills currently being reviewed which seek to prohibit early marriage in the Islamic Republic of Iran, girls and boys as young as 9 and 15 lunar years respectively can still get married under Iranian legislation, as of January 2021. In 2016, the Committee on the Rights of the Child stated that the legal age of marriage in the Islamic Republic of Iran “gravely violated rights under the Convention [on the Rights of the Child] and placed children, in particular girls, at risk of forced, early and temporary marriages, with irreversible consequences on their physical 23 Report of the Secretary General, Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2020, para 37 https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IR/Report_of_the_SecretaryGeneral_on_the_situation_of_human_rights_in_the_Islamic_Republic_of_IranA4320.pdf 24 Ibid. 25 Article 2 National Body for the Convention on the Rights of the Child Bylaws 26 Justice for Iran, submission to the CRC, 2015, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CRC/Shared%20Documents/IRN/INT_CRC_NGO_IRN_19746_E.pdf 27 The Supplementary Response of the (NBCRC) regarding the Concluding Observation on the Combined third and fourth periodic reports of the Committee on the Rights of the Child for the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2016, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=INT%2fCRC%2fCOB%2fIRN%2f23480 &Lang=en 28 Ibid. 29 National report, Islamic Republic of Iran, UPR 2019, https://undocs.org/A/HRC/WG.6/34/IRN/1 3