challenging yemeni child marriages
1 July 2008
Last Monday, Yemen’s Jibla Primary Court granted a divorce to Arwa Abdu Mohammed Ali al-Shahli from her husband Khalil Mohammed Abdullah al-Furas. Arwa, currently nine years old, was married to al-Furas last year and after frequent rapes and beatings fled to a hospital last month. She was the second Yemeni victim of a child marriage to request a divorce in as many months, and like her predecessor, ten-year-old Nujood Ali, she won her case. Furthermore, the two girls have set off public outcry against the inhumanity of child marriages in Yemen, where girls in rural areas are on average married off between 12 and 13, a practice that feeds the cycle of poverty and frequently has devastating effects on the girls who are its victims.
Yemen’s legislature has repeatedly struggled with legislation limiting the age at which girls may marry but has no concrete provision in place. Shada Nasser, the human rights lawyer who took on both girls’ cases, has since Nujood’s divorce received a number of calls about young girls trying to escape child marriages; according to her, the tide of popular opinion in Yemen has turned definitively against the practice. Nujood’s was the first child marriage case to be dealt with in a court of law rather than by tribal sheiks, and Arwa’s the second.
For more on Nujood’s story (and a little on Arwa’s), see this Sunday’s New York Times article.
funny how it’s the young, too young girls protecting themselves rather than the adults whose responsibilities are to take care of them.
Present time, child marriage is a curse in the global society. Child marriage is a violation of human rights. In most cases young girls get married off to significantly older men when they are still children. Child marriages must be viewed within a context of force and coercion, involving pressure and emotional blackmail, and children that lack the choice or capacity to give their full consent. Child marriage must therefore always be considered forced marriage because valid consent is absent – and often considered unnecessary. Child marriage is common practice in India, Niger, Bangladesh, Pakistan Guinea, Burkina Faso, Africa and Nepal,where mostly girls are married below the age of 18.
Child marriage has its own worse effect on the young girls, society, her children and health. Young girls who get married will most likely be forced into having sexual intercourse with their, usually much older, husbands. This has severe negative health consequences as the girl is often not psychologically, physically and sexually mature. Child brides are likely to become pregnant at an early age and there is a strong correlation between the age of a mother and maternal mortality and morbidity. Girls aged 11-13 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than women aged 20-24 and girls aged 15-19 are
twice as likely to die.
The above is an extract from Arun Kumar essay “Child Marriage as an Human Rights Issue”. This essay was ranked among the top ten essay in Human Rights Defence’s Essay competition 2008. If you would like to read more, visit: http://www.humanrightsdefence.org
Yours sincerely,
Tomas Eric Nordlander
HumanRightsDefence