Twelve-year-old Sally al-Sahabi was granted a divorce from her 26-year-old husband by a Yemeni court yesterday. The decision is seen as a boost for campaigners against child marriage – an issue on which the Yemeni parliament is expected to vote shortly.

There is currently no law in Yemen protecting children against early marriage. The law does forbid married couples from having sex before the age of 15 but it is not enforced, according to a lawyer who has taken on a number of child bride cases. Child brides also have no legal right to seek a divorce until they are 15.

Sally al-Sahabi won her case only because her husband agreed to the divorce under threat of imprisonment. She had earlier 
reported her husband and her father to the police, accusing them of falsifying the marriage certificate. They allegedly claimed she was 15 at the time of marriage, when in reality she was only ten.

One of the barriers to preventing child marriages in Yemen is establishing the true age of the people concerned. In 2007, according to Unicef, almost 40% of births in the country were not registered.

The issue of child marriage has also come to prominence in Saudi Arabia as a result of several cases involving girls marriage to men much older than themselves. In the latest development there, a prominent cleric, Sheikh Abd al-Mohsin al-Obaikan – who is also an adviser to the royal court – has declared his support for a campaign by Sayidaty magazine to set a minimum age for marriage. 

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 28 March 2010.