In Yemen, 8 girls aged no more than 20 die every day, and the cause is marriage

In Yemen, 8 girls no older than 20 die every day, and the cause is child marriage, early pregnancy and childbirth ..
“Brides of death” – a title given – by Yemeni human rights organisations to underage girls.
The repeated deaths of young girls after their marriage have inflamed the issue. The Yemeni city of “Haradh” witnessed one of the most horrific examples of suffering: the death of an eight-year-old girl named “Rawan” from her deep wounds and tearing after her marriage to a man in his forties.
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The tragedy of “Rawan” is no different from the tragedy of “Ilham Al-Ashi”, aged 12, in April 2010, who died 3 days after her marriage as a result of sexual violence; “Ilham” was married by way of an “exchange marriage”. Before that came the escape of “Nujood Ali”, aged “8 years”, from the house of her 42-year-old husband: she travelled alone to Sanaa and went to court, asking with unusual courage to be divorced from her husband.
Nor the unification of Yemen in 1990. According to United Nations data and the government, about 14% of Yemeni girls marry before the age of 15 and 52% marry by the age of 18, and official data show that Yemen saw 8 deaths of underage girls because of early marriage, pregnancy and childbirth.
According to a report by the International Center for Research, Yemen ranked 13th out of 20 countries for child marriage, with the proportion of girls who marry before eighteen reaching 48.4%, in addition to the gap between the wife and her husband.
Hope now hangs on a new draft law by the Yemeni women's and human rights figure Houria Mashhour setting the age at 18, while it is opposed by Islamist and tribal clerics and members of parliament who blocked it in 2009 .
Child marriage
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