http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=126378&d=14&m=9&y=2009&pix=world.jpg&category=World
Monday 14 September 2009 (24 Ramadan 1430)
12-year-old Yemen bride dies in labor
Ahmed Al-Haj | AP
SANAA: A 12-year-old Yemeni child-bride died after struggling for three days in
labor to give birth, a local human rights organization said.
Fawziya Abdullah Youssef died of severe bleeding on Friday while giving birth
to a stillborn in the Al-Zahra district hospital of Hodeida province, 223 km
west of the capital Sanaa.
Child marriages are widespread in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country,
where tribal customs dominate society. More than a quarter of the country's
females marry before age 15, according to a recent report by the Social Affairs
Ministry.
Youssef was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man who works
as a farmer in Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Al-Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights
organization, said Saturday.
Al-Quraishi, whose group promotes child rights in Yemen, said that he stumbled
upon Youssef in the hospital while investigating cases of children who had fled
from the fighting in the north.
"This is one of many cases that exist in Yemen," said Al-Quraishi. "The reason
behind it is the lack of education and awareness, forcing many girls into
marriage in this very early age." Impoverished parents in Yemen sometimes give
away their young daughters in return for hefty dowries. There is also a
long-standing tribal custom in which infant daughters and sons are promised to
cousins in hopes it will protect them from illicit relationships, he said.
Al-Quraishi said there are no statistics to show how many marriages involving
children are performed every year.
The issue of child brides vaulted into the headlines here two years ago when an
8-year-old Yemeni girl went by herself to a courtroom and demanded a judge
dissolve her marriage to a man in his 30s. She eventually won a divorce, and
legislators began looking at ways to curb the practice.
In February, Parliament passed a law setting the minimum marriage age at 17.
But some lawmakers are trying to kill the measure, calling it un-Islamic.
Before it could be ratified by Yemen's president, they forced it to be sent
back to Parliament's constitutional committee for review. Such marriages also
occur in some other countries, where several cases of child brides have been
reported in the past year, though the phenomenon is not believed to be nearly
as widespread as in Yemen.
