challenging yemeni child marriages

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.