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06/29/2008: "Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen"

One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband's house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months.

That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old.

Within days, Arwa a tiny, delicate-featured girl had become a celebrity in Yemen, where child marriage is common but has rarely been exposed in public. She was the second child bride to come forward in less than a month; in April, a 10-year-old named Nujood Ali had gone by herself to a courthouse to demand a divorce, generating a landmark legal case.

[ What women allow their daughters to be treated like that? What fathers for that matter? If this is the culture of Arabs then that is their business and not that of others to interfere. But when this looks like it is to be the fate of Europe.... ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/world/middleeast/29marriage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin