An eight-year-old Yemeni girl has died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, according to a social activist and local residents. The case has sparked outrage in the media and revived debate about child brides in the impoverished country.
Arwa Othman, head of Yemen’s House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old man late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province, north-western Yemen. “On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death,” Othman said. “They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn’t save her life.”
Othman said authorities had not taken any action against the girl’s family or her husband. A security official in the provincial town of Haradh denied any such incident had taken place, but two Meedi residents confirmed the incident and said tribal chiefs had tried to cover it up, warning a local journalist against covering the story.
Many poor families in Yemen marry off young daughters to save on the costs of bringing up a child and earn extra money from the dowry. A UN report released in January revealed that 10.5 million of Yemen’s 24 million people lacked sufficient food supplies, and 13 million had no access to safe water and basic sanitation.
Human Rights Watch urged Yemen in December 2011 to ban marriages of girls under 18, warning it deprived child brides of education and harmed their health. Quoting UN and government data, the group said nearly 14% of Yemeni girls were married before the age of 15 and 52% before the age of 18. Discussions on the issue were shelved by political turmoil after protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2011 that led to his ouster.
