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Saturday, April 10, 2010

13 year old bleeds to death after marriage

Human Rights groups have been deploring this sort of practice for years, yet all over the world women and girls continue to be chattel for patriarchal societies.  When is this sort of thing ever going to end? how many children/women have to die for someone to grow a conscience?  How many parents have to bury their own daughters  for them to rise up and say this isnt right?


This is more than a cultural thing, it is a subversive oppression of women and girls to maintain "order".  It has no basis in love of God or Allah, He does not wish for us to denigrate, debase, or destroy His children, not from what I have learned of God.   For years prior to the Gulf war and Desert storm, womens groups had decried the Taliban and its practices towards women, yet no one in the civilised world did anything to help, to speak out for them.  In Somalia, women are mutilated in female circumcision, in the Far East, children are sold into prostitution by their own families.  This is not of love and compassion, nor of God.  This is mankind's sickness and it is up to US to do something, write to your congressman, to your local embassy, donate, blog, talk about it....  just DO something to educate yourself and others. Please.


This was about money, and putting anything before God is worshipping something else.  I am thoroughly disgusted with mankind at times.  I am also grateful I was born in a country that so far, has allowed me the freedoms to be an equal in part, with men in our society. 


from the huffington post:
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.




2 comments:

  1. This makes me stomach really hurt! Do these people have a conscious???

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  2. Its their culture. I know it is hard to understand. They truly see nothing wrong with it, plus the country is so poor, that families who cannot pay the dowry could be saddled with a girl forever. Makes me thankful I only have to deal with morons comments here in the US. Can you imagine how powerless the women there feel? Or maybe they are so conditioned, they dont know or miss what they have not had.

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