A young bride in Yemen
This video tells the story of a young bride in Yemen who escaped a violent marriage and won a divorce.
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"He would ask me to bring him something, and if it wasn't there, he would beat me," she recalls. Her husband had offered a generous dowry, but before long he became violent and abusive. Encouraged by her father, she ran away.
"We cannot find a good balance between the husband and the girl. It is not marriage, it is only rape," says her lawyer. The lawyer successfully campaigned for a new law to make seventeen the legal minimum age of marriage.
Before her divorce, there was no protection for child brides. The country's influential religious conservatives opposed change. In their view, Islam sets the age of marriage at the point when a girl is ready for intercourse, not at a specific age.
Until the President ratifies the new law, it could still be reversed. That would leave many Yemeni girls to suffer the same fate.