13-Year-Old Yemeni Bride Dies Of Bleeding

SAN'A, Yemen — A 13-year-old Yemeni girl has died of injuries to her genitals four days after a family-arranged marriage, a human rights group said.

The practice of marrying young girls is widespread in Yemen and has drawn the attention of international rights groups seeking to pressure the government to outlaw child marriages. Legislation that would make it illegal for those under the age of 17 to marry is in serious peril after strong opposition from some of Yemen's most influential Islamic leaders.

The 13-year-old girl from Hajja province, northwest of the capital, died on April 2, four days after her marriage to a 23-year-old man, said Majed al-Madhaji, a spokesman for the Sisters Arab Forum for Human Rights. A medical report from al-Thawra hospital said she suffered a tear to her genitals and severe bleeding.

Authorities detained the husband.

The Yemeni rights group said the girl was married off in an agreement between two men to marry each other's sisters to avoid having to pay expensive bride-prices. The group said that was a common arrangement in the deeply impoverished country.

Yemen's gripping poverty plays a role in hindering efforts to stamp out the practice, as poor families find themselves unable to say no to bride-prices in the hundreds of dollars for their daughters.

More than a quarter of Yemen's females marry before age 15, according to a report last year by the Social Affairs Ministry. Tribal custom also plays a role, including the belief that a young bride can be shaped into an obedient wife, bear more children and be kept away from temptation.

Last month, a group of the country's highest Islamic authorities declared those supporting a ban on child marriages to be apostates.

A February 2009 law set the minimum age for marriage at 17, but it was repealed and sent back to parliament's constitutional committee for review after some lawmakers called it un-Islamic. The committee is expected to make a final decision on the legislation this month.

Some of the clerics who signed the decree against a ban sit on the committee.

Further imperiling the effort is the weak government's reluctance to confront the clerics and other conservative tribal officials, whose support is essential to their fragile hold on power.

The issue of Yemen's child brides got widespread attention three years ago when an 8-year-old girl boldly 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 September, a 12-year-old Yemeni child-bride died after struggling for three days in labor to give birth, a local human rights organization said.

Yemen once set 15 as the minimum age for marriage, but parliament annulled that law in the 1990s, saying parents should decide when a daughter marries.

Comments

[Giveadamn]

10:07 AM on 04/12/2010

Yemen, a stone age, biblical land, where a girl is born, cursed to a life of servitude and rape! A 23 year old, sexual sadist or Yemeni incubus, and her brother, clearly murdered this young girl! If it were Black men were still being enslaved, the world would cry out, but for women I hear only their tears!

[Princeton123]

11:22 PM on 04/11/2010

For a fair discussion, does anybody know the statistics on the girls below age 16 getting pregnant in US or Europe?

[JacksonD]

12:01 AM on 04/12/2010

Princeton123, how would the answer to your question constitute a "fair discussion"?

I've read that teen pregnancy rates are highest in the United States (did a Google search and so could you) According to this: . http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-ATSRH.html The majority of teens having sex are increasingly older and girls are having sex with those who are 1-3 years older, not 10+ years older and 10% of births are to teenagers. In addition, these are voluntary acts and if they aren't, are subject to prosecution as rape.

What in the world does this have to do with a 13 year old child being married off LEGALLY to a man who took Viagara (or similar medication), tied her up and literally raped her to death?

This is about a society where there is a religious sanction on marrying off your children at a young age and a sense of entitlement that you can do pretty much whatever you want with you want with your wife/property trumps all common decency. .

The fact that teenagers are having sex in the US and getting pregnant really does not come into the equation of that. This is some feeble attempt at relavatism and not appropriate. A young girl was tortured and died because of her "husbands" rights to her, not because she had some sloppy relationship in the family room while her parents were at work.

[clevernamehere]

01:07 AM on 04/12/2010

16 very different than 13 biologically so I don't know why you are using that as a cut-off point.

4% of girls and 10% of boys have sex by age 13 (youth risk behavior survey)

Just under 50% of 11th graders are virgins, just under 60% of 10th graders are virgins (campaign to prevent teen pregnancy).

In 2008, there were 42 births for every 1000 girls 15-19 (campaign to prevent teen pregnancy)

[Ajita]

06:58 PM on 04/11/2010

"A February 2009 law set the minimum age for marriage at 17, but it was repealed and sent back to parliament's constitutional committee for review after some lawmakers called it un-Islamic."

And the 'lawmakers' would be right.

Why are we so scared to denounce religion when the primitive beliefs it encompasses are used to commit violations of human rights?

[JacksonD]

07:19 PM on 04/11/2010

Ajita, I believe the fear you mention is directly related to the perception that Muslims are persecuted peoples and I have often seen people actually call it racist to point to the disgusting state of affairs that goes on under the umbrella of exercising that particular religion.

Muslims are of every color and race and the vast majority or not even Arab - calling such questioning "racist" does a disservice to those who have actually been victims of vile racism in this world. We need to eradicate racism and that effort is undermined by giving something that has nothing to do with race that title.

I am an atheist and see a clear double standard here. If one is Christian or Jewish, there is wide condemnation of things that are and have been done in the name of those religions but when it comes to Islam, it's all hands off.

The sad fact of the matter, is that there is enough of an example made by the Prophe and understood/agreeed by Islamic juresprudence to allow these disgusting things to go on. To fight to change it is extremely dangerous and could amount to apostasy which is punishable by death.

[Evita Luisa]

11:38 PM on 04/10/2010

"Early marriage places girls at increased risk of dropping out of school, being exposed to violence, abuse and exploitation, and even losing their lives from pregnancy, childbirth and other complications," UNICEF said.
Uhhh, anyone, anyone at the helm of UNICEF, any functional mind at all? Thinking, maaaayyybeee, about adding, oh, a word or two, about child brides and the risk of marriage itself, clearly, defined by these pre-DarkAges mentalities, as pure, brutal s-e-x?
Come'on now -- if you don't take the lead, who will???

And, to all who would post about cultural relativism and how child brides "work" in other societies, because of this and that -- spare me! This is NOT "Romeo and Juliet".

[who38]

09:53 AM on 04/11/2010

That is true; however, UNICEF is probably doing as much as it can. Remember, that agency does not have to be allowed to enter a country. Haven't the UN aid workers left Darfur because it is not safe for them to be there. So....what have you done PERSONALLY to help these women? Do you belong to any Women's Rights groups in your country? Do you give money to FINCA, a group that aids women? Do you involve yourself in any local group that counters the abuse of women and children in your area? Are your feet on the ground? If not, you should not be spared.

[plow]

11:16 PM on 04/10/2010

I can't stand these people their nothing more than criminals.

[who38]

11:39 PM on 04/10/2010

It's a cultural thing, like marrying your dead African brother's wife even though he died of AIDS, or denying reproductive information to women and girls because it is against your religion.

[pokemon]

10:38 PM on 04/10/2010

So it's ok to be a ped-O under Islamic law?

[who38]

11:40 PM on 04/10/2010

Works for Mormons too.

[hanoum]

01:34 AM on 04/11/2010

Looks like the vatican doesn't take it very seriously either.

[Erzsebet Gilbert]

01:32 AM on 04/11/2010

Across the board in the Judeo-Christian tradition, child marriage is condoned as well; hey, there's part of the Old Testament in which the young girls of a family are given over for rape to protect their old men. It is neither fair nor wise to impugn Islam alone for this shameful practice, and you can't claim that millions of Muslims around the world are fine with it any more than you can claim all Christians follow Leviticus or what have you. By claiming this to be the crime of only one religion, you only hinder any attempts to stop it.

[who38]

09:55 AM on 04/11/2010

Thank you. Fanned.

[JacksonD]

09:44 PM on 04/10/2010

This story just gets more and more horrifying. According to an updated article:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/10/world/AP-ML-Yemen-Child-Bride.html?_r=3&ref=global-home

Not only was she tied down so he could force himself on her, he tried to get a doctor to prescribe tranquilizers for her knock her out - he DID obtain some "performance enhancing" pills, tied her up and literally raped her to death.

This is so incredibly sick, I can hardly find the words.

[who38]

11:42 PM on 04/10/2010

Sounds like the man needed some sex education. Of course, US aid can't be used for that purpose.

Hope the groom is tried for murder and/or assault with a deadly weapon; although it sound like his weapon wasn't well calibrated.

[JacksonD]

12:00 AM on 04/11/2010

The groom's family is poor and it's unlikely that they could come up with the blood money that will be necessary to make this go away. Hopefully there will be updates to the story as he needs to be prosecuted for this but I'm not holding my breath. The fact that he was/is detained, doesn't mean that something will happen to him when all is said and done.

[clevernamehere]

01:09 AM on 04/12/2010

You don't tie a child up and rape them because no one has explained ovulation and STIs to you.

Sex education isn't the reason this happened, the reason this happened is because this girl was not protected by her family or country and her groom did not care about her desires, never mind her basic well being.

[Blues02]

01:50 AM on 04/11/2010

Utterly horrifying. Just reading what she had to go through ....ugh I hate the world.

[Bacygirl]

02:26 PM on 04/10/2010

I have more respect for a culture that is upfront and honest about its sexual abuse of children. Some of our mothers/grandmothers married at age 13, 14, 15 or 16, so our culture is not so far removed from the practice.

At least the men of Yemen marry their young girls. That's better than letting perverts lurk and hunt children down, looking for any opportunity to steal the innocence of young victims. They're hunting our kids at nurseries, at school, at church, next door, at the local mall. Although the psychology is that child predators cannot be rehabilitated, until they kill they are eligible to live among us. American kids aren't any safer than Yemeni kids so no point in any self-righteous declarations.

[Justthe1]

03:08 PM on 04/10/2010

Wow!!!! Your outlook on this topic is really scary, especially you being a woman. It does not matter whether our mother's and grandmother got married at the age of 13,14,15, and even 16, IT WAS STILL WRONG!!! not to mention sick. I am not one to judge, but it sounds as if you okay with this sickness simply because they are open and upfront with being perverted bastard not to mention the fact that they married these little girls. I wonder how you would feel if that 13yr old was your daughter. I also disagree with your last statement, it's attitudes like yours and others like you that our children are continuously being sexually abused and exploited, both in America and other Countries. The children in America are a little safer because the law prohibits this sickness, children in other countries, such as Asia, Africa, Thailand etc. do not have government backing so they are more at risk. It really breaks my heart to read this type of comment from a woman.

[Bacygirl]

01:01 AM on 04/11/2010

Excuse me; clearly you miss the entire point.

We look with disgust and disdain at this story when our society is no better in protecting our children from sexual abuse. The laws of America establish punishments AFTER the crime, it does not PROTECT children or deter anyone from the crime of sexual abuse.

In a society that interprets the First Amendment to include filth, and protects the rights of perverts to produce and sell pornography, there must necessarily be an evil byproduct.

The rights of many of the world's women to be empowered through education, the vote, to own property, and to work have only been recognized in the last century. American women started the 20th Century as property of husbands and have only had the right to vote for 90 years (19th Amendment, 1920). States have minimum marriage ages, but even today parents can grant permission for young teens to marry. But our girls remain the prey.

How you interpret my perspective to be insensitive because I spoke to the duplicity and hypocrasy of our culture is beyond me. To see it for what it is does not mean I endorse it.

[Bacygirl]

01:23 AM on 04/11/2010

Furthermore, marriage is an honorable state. Although the marriage of a 13 year old is deplorable in our culture, marriage offers a girl very important protections in muslim society. It is not entirely reasonable to assign our cultural standards to people who are living inside another reality. It is wrong to assign evil motives to people who are simply living the way they know. People do not have access to the education and entertainments and other diversions of our perfect society. Arranged marriages are still the norm in India, the Middle East and Africa and other parts of the world.

[realitytrumpsbull]

09:49 PM on 04/10/2010

In times past, underage marriage along with multiple wives were a more acceptable norm. Modern wisdom teaches though that this is a social practice that does not promote the welfare and well-being of society, the teenagers, sometimes children involved, but it happens anyway, in countries such as Yemen, India, and still others. Europe's laws are also not far removed.

The question is, though, what is the social appeal of marriage at such a young age? What are the traditions and social pressures behind this situation that influence people to introduce their children into essentially forced, arranged marriages?

Religion aside, what is proper and prudent, here? The past is the past, as long as we stop trying to live in it, and this is a practice that should be firmly laid into past tense, something people USED to do, before the Enlightenment. Just because once upon a time, barbarism was tolerated, is no reason to revert.

[who38]

11:55 PM on 04/10/2010

It is not "modern wisdom" that has changed the social practice of young marriage, it is the ability of women to live an independent life that has changed this "cultural norm". Unfortunately, in Yemen the appeal of marriage is one of safety, social inclusion, and tradition.

I live in the US and remember that after WWII, Rosie, the Riveter, was sent home to bake cakes. If she didn't have a husband to buy her a stove, she went to work in a dime store and was seen as a failure.

[Paulo1]

12:54 PM on 04/10/2010

I find it difficult to stomach the immediate vitrol against Child Brides in Yeman and the accusations that this much indict Islam when so many people crow about how "a few" abusive priests molesting boys in the Catholic Church does not indict the whole Church.

Child abuse is wrong. Its wrong if your Catholic, Muslim or Martian.

I for one refuse to set a double standard however. I will call the clerics defending this practice in Yemen a bunch of barbaric idiots and use the exact same label for Pope Benedict and his cover up. I will not condemn all of Islam or all of Christianity.

[JacksonD]

09:48 PM on 04/10/2010

Well said - fanned!

[Anti-Panoptic]

12:33 PM on 04/10/2010

Well, ya gotta love hegemonic patriarchy. How about the psychological implications for the men that feel a need to brutalize and for all intensive purposes kill a female child through her genitalia? Thats the REAL question in my opinion.

[who38]

11:59 PM on 04/10/2010

Don't many of them join the clergy in an attempt to avoid having sexual relations?

[JacksonD]

12:17 AM on 04/11/2010

Islamic clergy does not include celibacy.

[JackAbug]

11:44 AM on 04/10/2010

If this girl's community practices FGM (female genital mutilation, sometimes misleadingly called female circumcision), that could explain her death better than age alone, particularly if infibulation is the local tradition. In infibulation, the labia are scraped raw and/or cut away, then stitched together to create a smaller opening which prevents intercourse. No form of FGM is actually part of Islam -- neither prescribed nor even mentioned in the Quran, which instead lists pleasurable sex among things husbands are obligated to provide to wives. But cultures where FGM is entrenched are frequently also Muslim, and many people from such cultures mistakenly believe it's required by Allah rather than regional traditions.

Puberty isn't a process which occurs at a set age. Some girls develop breasts and begin menstruating at age nine, while others have neither breasts nor periods at fifteen. It's actually less likely for girls in impoverished areas to begin puberty earlier, largely due to nutrition. So the fact that some Western girls have consensual sex -- with teen partners, not adults; Western laws define an adult engaging in sexual activity with a thirteen-year-old as rape -- at age 13 is irrelevant to the Yemeni child-marriage issue. Parents consenting to sex on their child's behalf is precisely opposite to how Western jurisprudence views adolescent sexuality, where a teen under her/his jurisdiction's age of consent might agree to sex which their parents object to, and the law views such acts as statutory rape, sometimes even when both participants are underage.

[who38]

10:11 AM on 04/11/2010

Good points; particularly that re/ FGM. If that practice could be made illegal, my guess is that within two generations, the plight of women would be improved. It has started in Africa, although there are some activisits living in England who have are now pushing for the continuation of FGM. Kind of like the activists in the US who are pushing for women to not have choices re/ reproduction.

[hischagal]

10:48 AM on 04/10/2010

Right. So, it's the same "non-Islamics" that have mutilated female genitalia all over Africa?

[JackAbug]

11:53 AM on 04/10/2010

FGM and Islam are often seen in the same regions and cultures, yes, but that isn't because FGM has anything to do with Islam.

In most Christian weddings, the bride wears a white dress... but the tradition of white bridal gowns has nothing to do with Christianity itself, and nothing in the Christian Bible says brides should wear white. It's a regional/cultural tradition which developed alongside Christianity, and is most common among Christians and less likely to be practiced by non-Christians, but it doesn't actually have anything to do with Christianity.

[JacksonD]

12:19 AM on 04/11/2010

What people in the West don't understand is that if it were contrary to Islam, in an Islamic country, it would be forbidden. There is unreliable ahadith where it is reported that the Prophet said "cut only a little" when asked about it - so the opening for such practices to be sanctioned is there.

[Philosopher-king]

03:13 AM on 04/10/2010

The abuse of females, young and old, should not be supported by any government or group anywhere on this planet. I would understand these wars in the middle east of our mission were to liberate the women of these societies, however this is not the case. Apparently, innocent women and children are caught in the cross fire, used as human shields during the counter insurgencies, and executed if she rebels is the slightest bit. What I don't understand is this: If we men refuse to school men in the middle east on treating their own mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives with the divine respect they deserve, we will fail in protecting our own mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives as well.

This young girl should have never been married, and she should of had the protection of the state to fend off predators. This is a civil right issue, this is a human issue. The man who married this young should be brought to justice.

[JackAbug]

11:55 AM on 04/10/2010

The article does say he's in custody...

[Azuki]

03:11 AM on 04/10/2010

It's easy to blame this type of thing on Islam, but the reality is that most people, regardless of religion, would be disgusted by what happened to this little girl. Religion generally makes these types of situations worse, but the underlining issue here seems to be more about poverty and lack of education.

[Joshua Martinez]

01:21 PM on 04/10/2010

How can you NOT blame religion? Poverty and lack of education have nothing to do with it....Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are the wealthiest middle east nations, and abuse to women is common-place with SHARIA LAW (Islam).....

[hanoum]

08:30 PM on 04/10/2010

You are grossly mistaken if you think that poverty doesn't exist in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And, yes I'm talking about the native population, not the "guest workers".

[who38]

12:02 AM on 04/11/2010

Ever been to Italy?

[noladebby]

02:12 AM on 04/10/2010

So sick! You've got to be a real pervert to marry a child!

[Justthe1]

03:11 PM on 04/10/2010

I so agree