A million signatures delivered to Yemen’s parliament call for an end to the child brides.
Hundreds of Yemeni students demonstrated outside the Yemeni parliament this week to protest against child marriages.
Students demanded parliament pass legislation to raise the minimum marriage age of girls to 18 in a country where child brides are a common occurrence.
Protestors delivered their one-million-signature petition to a parliament representative.
“There has been no legislation to prevent young girls from getting married and this is a big and dangerous problem that affects many young girls in Yemen,” Ahmad Al-Qurashi, director of the Sana’a-based Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection in Yemen told The Media Line.
“Last year the Yemeni government discussed a law [raising] the minimum age of marriage to 17,” he said. “But conservative lawmakers rejected this bill, on the grounds that it contradicted Islamic law. The discussion of the law was postponed to an unspecified date.”
Under the proposed February 2009 law, parents who marry off their daughters under the age of 17 would face a year in jail or fined the equivalent of about $500, unless the marriage was seen by a judge to be in the best interests of the child. The legislation further stipulated that no marriage could take place at any age without the woman’s consent.
But after being opposed by Islamists and tribal forces who considered it an attack against religion, tribal norms and against the Prophet Muhammad, the bill was sent back to parliament for review unratified by Yemen’s president.
“We hope the Yemeni parliament will uphold its previous position and decide on an article that makes 17 a minimum age for marriage,” Al-Qurashi said.
Al-Qurashi noted that despite the problems, there has been an improvement in public awareness to the problem of young marriages.
“The situation is similar to the way it was in the past, but we feel that the level of awareness in society has improved,” he said. “We’ve also noticed an improvement in the number of communications and complaints that have reached the Violations and Monitoring Unit at Seyaj. We hear from young girls who have refused to get married and are turning to the organization for help and for shelter.”
Nadya Khalife, a researcher for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch said child marriages were common in the region as a whole.
“Child marriages are particularly common in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia,” she told The Media Line. “Both have no legislation on a minimum age for marriage.”
“There are numerous factors that have to do with culture and tradition, and the socio-economic situation of families,” Khalife explained. “For instance, Yemen is still very much a tribal society whereby early marriage is a traditional factor.”
“In other instances, families may marry off their daughters for economic reasons,” she continued. “A family that may be poor may see an incentive for marrying their daughter because the husband and his family will have to pay mahr or a bride price – a mandatory gift in Islam given to the bride’s family by the groom and his family.”
The adverse effects this has on the young brides are numerous.
“Girls, first of all, lose their right to an education,” Khalife said. “Without an education, they will not have employable skills to be able to provide income for their families, if they are ever divorced or widowed. Their lives are confined to the home and child rearing and they shoulder responsibilities they are too young to handle.”
Last September, a girl of 12 died during childbirth because of severe bleeding after giving birth to a stillborn child in a city located around 220 kilometers from the capital. Doctors said her body could not handle the pregnancy.
“Health-wise,” Khalife added, “young girls are physically and mentally not ready to handle the burdens of childbearing and their lives may be at risk during childbirth. Sometimes, because they are so young, they may be exposed to sexual abuse or violence.”
Young girls in Yemen are often married to much older, wealthy men: one consequence of the rampant poverty in the country. According to official data, 59 percent of the population is living in extreme poverty.
Another form of exploitation in Yemen is known as “tourist marriages”, where prosperous tourists “buy” brides from impoverished families.
Though exact figures are missing, child marriages are especially common in rural areas, where there are low literacy rates and poor economic conditions, and are often conducted to protect a girl’s honor or ensure financial security.
According to the UK based charity Save the Children, there have been recent rises in school enrollment, but the country’s school statistics remain among the lowest in the Arab world, especially for girls and particularly in rural areas.
There have been suggestions these gains have overly stretched the country’s scarce educational resources. About 87 percent of the poor are illiterate or have not completed primary education.
The story of Nujoud ‘Ali, a ten-year-old Yemenite girl, hit international headlines in 2008, as she independently sought a divorce from her 30-year-old husband who she said was beating and raping her.
Proponents of child marriages mention the Prophet Muhammad, who according to traditional sources consummated his marriage to his wife ‘Aisha when she was nine or ten years old.
But rights advocates say it is a mistake to consider marrying a child a religious or customary obligation based on this.