Press. voanews.com
Child marriage
has soared in Yemen as families struggle to feed their children amid a conflict
that has left the country on the brink of famine, the U.N. children's agency
said Monday. More than two-thirds of girls in Yemen are married off before they
reach 18, compared to half of girls before the conflict escalated, UNICEF said
in a report to mark the second anniversary of the war.
It said parents
struggling with deepening poverty were increasingly marrying off their
daughters to reduce costs and the number of mouths to feed or because they
believed a husband's family could offer better protection.
Around 80
percent of families in Yemen are in debt or are borrowing money to feed their
children, the agency said. Dowry payments — paid by the husband's family in
Yemen — are an additional incentive for poor parents to marry off daughters
early, it added.
There is no
minimum age of marriage in Yemen, where campaigners say girls are sometimes wed
at eight or nine. Some die from rape injuries or childbirth complications after
becoming pregnant before their bodies are fully developed.
Yemen's hunger
crisis follows two years of civil war pitting the Iran-allied Houthi group
against a Saudi-backed coalition, which has caused economic collapse and
severely restricted food and fuel imports. More than 10,000 people have been
killed in the conflict and around 3 million people have fled their homes,
although some are now returning.
Early marriage
is especially common in Al Hudaydah, Hajjah and Ibb governorates that host
large numbers of uprooted people, UNICEF said. "One of the first
casualties when families are displaced and lose their incomes is girls,"
UNICEF's spokesman in Yemen, Rajat Madhok, told Reuters.
Initial results
from a new UNICEF study on child marriage suggest around 44 percent of girls
and women are married under the age of 15 in some parts of Yemen. Bilkis, 16,
told researchers that life had become unbearable after she was married at 13.
"I was a
child who was not mentally and physically able to be a wife," the report
quoted her as saying. "I was warned not to do anything that children do.
Through the window, I could watch other children play." Child marriage not
only endangers girls' lives but deprives them of education and opportunities,
and increases the risk of domestic and sexual violence, campaigners say.
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