A 13 year-old girl has died in Yemen on her wedding night after succumbing to horrific internal injuries. lham Mahdi al Assi died after her wedding to a man over twice her age. A medical report from the unit that treated her, the al-Thawra hospital, said that she suffered from a series of tears to her genitals and severe internal bleeding.
Sigrid Kaag, who is the Regional Director for UNICEF, said this a statement that the United Nations child agency is ‘dismayed by the death of yet another child bride in Yemen’.
‘Ilham is a martyr of abuse of children’s lives in Yemen and a clear example of what is justified by the lack of limits on the age of marriage,’ the Shaqaeq Arab Forum for Human Rights said in a statement.
More than 25% of Yemeni females marry before the age of fifteen, according to a recent report commissioned by the The Social Affairs Ministry.
The country once set fifteen as the minimum age for a wedding, but the government soon annulled that law back in the nineties, claiming that it should be up to parents to decide when a daughter gets married.
YouTube Filmmaker Coby Persin recently filmed a social experiment about child marriage and people’s reaction to it. With very interesting results. See for yourself:
Share to get the message across. Child marriage is wrong and no child should have to be put through this.