In Yemen, 12-year-old Girl Finally Gets Divorce

27 March 2010

Sally al-Sahabi, 12, and her father enter the police station, hoping that having her husband arrested will pressure him into granting her a divorce

In Yemen, it is legal and common for young girls to marry fully-grown men. But a growing activist movement trying to abolish the practice won a small victory Saturday, when 12-year-old Sally al-Sahabi was granted a divorce from her 26-year-old husband.

Sally's little brother held some of the many television mics in the packed, sweltering courthouse Saturday. Activists and journalists crowded around the table where a judge questioned her and her husband, Nabil al-Marshahi. After four months of begging her husband and petitioning human rights groups, Sally was finally getting her divorce.

Anti-child-bride activists looked jubilant when the judge pronounced the couple divorced. But Shadda Nasser, Sally's lawyer later said that the only reason the divorce went through was because Nabil had requested it. Sally was beaten and raped as a 10-year-old bride, but her December 2009 petition for divorce had failed.

Nasser says this divorce is a win for a growing movement in Yemen to end the practice of early marriage. A law that would make 17 the minimum age for marriage in Yemen has been languishing in parliamentary committees for over a year now, and is expected to be voted on again in the coming weeks.