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- iHaveNet.com: Middle East
by Joel Brinkley
A senior official in the
It's not uncommon to hear about girls 12 years old or younger being forced to marry men in their 70s or 80s. For many years now, news stories about this problem have been tarnishing the Saudi government's image.
"The ministry has adopted a clear stance on underage marriages, and the issue was raised to the regulators," Mohammed al-Babetein, head of the
The problem is, he made that statement more than a year ago, in April 2012. And that was hardly the first time. In fact, in 2009 the ministry announced that it intended to regulate the marriages of young girls. This came right after a court refused to nullify the forced marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a man in his late 50s. Then, in the spring of 2011 the
Finally, after so many years of fatuous promises, in April the
Even some of the human-rights groups that lobbied hard for the new law recognize the problems. Equality Now, one of the key NGOs behind this campaign to end child marriage, remarked that "while these exemptions to the minimum age of marriage ... are still worrisome, it does indicate a step forward in offering protection to girls."
Given that it has taken so many years to get to this point, there's still no assurance the bill will pass. When I called the Saudi embassy in Washington last week to ask about the bill, embassy officers said they knew nothing about it. Obviously it's not a top-of-the-agenda item in Riyadh.
In fact, early this year, Saudi Justice Minister Mohammed Al Issa complained that "the marriage of underage girls in the country is not a phenomenon yet, as some claim," and "those who say this are wrong."
Equality Now is one of many groups that heartily disagrees. In 2010 it took on the case of 12-year-old Fatima, whose father sold her for marriage to a 50-year-old man who already had a wife and 10 children. Fatima managed to escape and finally did get a divorce this year, with help from Equality Now. And a 15-year-old who was married off to an 86-year-old man in Jizan in southeast Saudi Arabia, also managed to get a divorce in January, assisted by the
Suad Abu-Dayyeh, Equality Now's regional consultant, said: "This destruction of a girl's childhood and absolute rejection of the possibility that she has something to offer is endemic in societies where girls are pawned off to the highest bidder."
By writing a draft law on "a minimum age of marriage," he added "Saudi Arabia is finally starting to deal with the fact that it cannot continue to ignore the basic human rights of women and girls."
A study by the
Clerics and religious judges generally oppose the proposed law, citing Shariah law that "does not allow Muslims to make pedophilia illegal," as one anti-Muslim blogger put it.
But let's hope this time that the Saudi leadership, with a draft law actually in hand, even if highly flawed, can overrule the nation's extremists and finally begin tackling this terrible problem.
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Article: Copyright ©, Tribune Media Services.
"Saudi Arabia's Tentative Steps to End Child Marriage "