Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a video that documents the psychological and physical damage child marriage causes to the young girls of Yemen. The video underscores HRW’s proposal to include a minimum age of marriage at 18 years in the drafting of Yemen’s new constitution.
The HRW video records experiences of Yemeni child brides, a father who remorses over offering his daughters for marriage, reports of a local gynecologist, and many other accounts contributing to a wide series of powerful perspectives.
The video was released in lieu of recent controversial story of an eight year old Yemeni girl who allegedly married a 40 year old man and bled to death after intercourse. Yemeni local officials are currently denying the allegations despite an outcry from international media.
According to HRW, Yemen’s desperate economic situation pressures families to marry off daughters in exchange for a dowry; a wider age margin between the wife and husband often results in a larger dowry.
Long term effects of child marriage on young girls include an abrupt discontinuation of education leading to limited opportunities, detrimental harm on reproductive health, emotional trauma, domestic abuse and martial rape, and social isolation.
According to UNICEF’s 2006 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, 52 percent of Yemeni girls were married before they reached the age of 18 and 14 percent were married before 15 years old.
UNESCO reports that as of 2007, the adult literacy rate for Yemenis aged 15 and over was 59 percent; 77 percent for all males and 40 percent for all females. UNESCO’s 2005 global monitoring reports that primary school enrollment was 85 percent for boys and 65 percent for girls with an even wider margin in secondary school. Household responsibilities and low female teacher to female student ratio contributes to the discrepancies, yet child marriage is still said to be one of the main factors.
There is currently no legal minimum age for marriage in Yemen despite previous attempts from parliament. In 2009, a group of lawmakers abolished a proposal setting the legal minimum marriage age at 17 and argued that the minimum age was contrary to the Sharia, Islamic law.
Creative Commons Love: Oxfam International on Flickr.com
Written by Rachel Pozivenec