Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen

Poverty, combined with families producing more children than they can afford, can end childhood for girls as young as eight years of age. “Pulled out of school and forced to have children before their bodies are ready, many rural Yemeni women end up illiterate and with serious health problems,” writes Robert F. Worth for the New York Times. “Their babies are often stunted, too.” Some Islamic clerics defend the practice, noting that one of the Prophet Mohammed’s many wives was a nine-year-old, albeit 14 centuries ago; other supporters argue that young brides make for compliant wives. The legal age for marriage in Yemen is 15. But Worth reports the stories of two young girls forced into marriages and the subsequent shame and outrage expressed in their communities. The two girls, aged 9 and 10, in separate cases walked away from their husbands, men in their 30s, and were fortunate to find sympathetic judges. Even uneducated and impoverished youth recognize child marriage as a cultural ignominy and find the courage to speak out. – YaleGlobal