Child Bride Dies During Childbirth in Yemen
On Friday in San’a,Yemen, a twelve year old girl died trying to give birth to a still-born. Fawziya Abdullah Youssef was in labor for three days before she ultimately died of severe bleeding.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, has a society based on Muslim tribal customs. It’s common for poor Yemeni families to give away their young daughters in exchange for large dowries. The Social Affairs Ministry reports that roughly 1 in 4 Yemeni girls get married before the age of 15. Youssef was only 11 when her father married her to a 24-year-old man from Saudi Arabia.
“The reason behind it is the lack of education and awareness,” says Ahmed al-Quraishi, chairman of Siyaj human rights organization, which promotes the rights of children in Yemen. There are no statistics to show how many children are married every year.
The issue also made headlines two years ago, when an 8-year-old Yemeni girl went to a courthouse by herself, demanding a divorce from a man in his 30’s. She was eventually granted the divorce, and it prompted legislators to question the practice of marrying children.
Then in February of this year, Yemeni parliament passed a law that would make the minimum age to wed 17. Before the president could sign off on it, however, some lawmakers requested it be reevaluated by the parliament’s constitutional committee. They claimed the measure was potentially un-Islamic.
Other Middle Eastern countries have been known to permit child brides, but it’s believed to be the most widespread in Yemen.
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i think we should be more vigilant against Child Labor. child labor have an increasing trend these days specially in third world countries.