Yemen’s human rights minister says she will
work to relaunch a bill fixing the minimum
marriage age at 17, after the reported death of
a young girl on her wedding night. Eight-year-old Rawan was said to have died
last week from internal haemorrhaging after
s*xual intercourse on her wedding night, after
having been married to a man in his 40s in
the northeastern province of Hajja. “I wrote to the president of the chamber of
deputies to re-file on the parliamentary
agenda the bill limiting the age of marriage to
17 years, which has been suspended since
2009,” Huriya Mashhoor told AFP on Saturday. Ms Mashhoor spoke a day after the
government formed a committee to
investigate the reports of the girl’s death. “We do not have enough evidence at the
moment” about the incident, Ms Mashhoor
said. “But I am worried that there could be an
attempt to silence the matter, especially as it
took place in an isolated rural area in Hajja
province where there have been similar cases
before”. “If the case was confirmed and covered up,
then the crime would be more serious,” Ms
Mashhoor warned. Ms Mashhoor has been involved in a campaign
against the marriage of child brides in Yemen,
ravaged by years of strife and widespread
poverty. There is no clear definition in the
country of what constitutes a child, making it
difficult to battle the practice. Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that
14 per cent of girls in Yemen are married
before the age of 15, and 52 per cent before
18, citing Yemeni and 2006 data from the
United Nations.
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