Death of Child Bride, A Tragedy in Yemen

September 11 was tragic day in America eight years ago. But the date marked another tragedy this year in the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen. The Yemen Organization for Childhood Protection reported that Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, 12, died of excessive bleeding during child birth of a still born baby. Youssef was one of hundreds coerced into a situation like this.

Exploitation of young girls in Yemen is customary. NYTimes.com said that more than a quarter of females are forced into marriage before 15, and up 50 percent in rural areas of the country. Youssef was no exception.

A reporter from Middle East Online gave details of her family life: raised in an impoverished family, her father suffering from kidney failure, forced to drop out of school and married off at age 11. She became pregnant only a year later.

This is a trend in societal circumstance for the girls married off. Their families need the money and they pay the cost, corporally, mentally, and emotionally. In essence, they are robbed of a childhood and, in the case of twelve-year-old Fawziya, a life. It’s almost as if it’s their job.

"These marriages are the result of poverty, ignorance and illiteracy, and lead to the destruction of the lives of these young girls, whose opinion is not taken in consideration," said Ahmed al-Qorashi, director of Yemen Organization for Childhood Protection.

Middle East Online posted Youssef’s picture with the caption, “Tragic and outrageous,” a sign that activists in the country are fed up and pushing for change. In February, the government passed a law stating the legal minimum age to be married as 17. Last year, a divorce court granted an eight-year-old girl’s request to divorce her 20-year-old husband.

Positive change is coming, but old habits are still hard to break. The divorce lawyer on the case above said in the article on Middle East Online saying she was currently working on a divorce case for a girl whose father married her off at age two. I repeat, age two.

It’s at this point where we must ask ourselves, “Why?” Why do these parents feel so desperate that they would auction off their own daughters? Why can’t they seek help of the government? How can we stop exploitation of girls too young to know what a husband or a marriage is?

The Yemen Organization for Childhood Protection has cut the ribbon on the issue, now it’s our turn to follow up.