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Written By: Abdul-Qawi Dahan
Article Date: Jul 1, 2008 - 12:20:35 AM
Jibla Primary Court permitted a 9-year-old girl, Arwa Abdu Mohammed Ali al-Shahli, to divorce her husband, Khalil Mohammed Abdullah al-Furas, aged 35, on Monday June 23.
In the presence of Arwa, her parents and spectators, Khalil Ali Ahmed Mosleh, the legal representative for the husband, consented to the annulment.
The child, Arwa, cancelled all her obligations to her husband, including the dowry, and released him from all liabilities in front of the judge. “I am very pleased and happy” she declared when the decree was issued and the divorce was completed. She was asked about whether she would prefer to go home and live with her parents or with her sponsor; she preferred the latter, adding that she forgives her father and her mother for permitting her to marry. She also declared her wish to go back to school to continue her education like to become a teacher or a doctor.
Fuad Mockbil al-Hamadi, Judge and Head of Jibla’s Principal Court, talked about how children are forced into marriage at early ages, and demanded a law to define the legal age for marrying a girl, and an item in the law to criminalize the parents and the principal clerk of the marriage contract. “Poverty and difficult living conditions can cause such marriages to be repeated; we should not allow any premature girl to marry and we shall offer procedures to divorce any girl married in the same way as Arwa,” al-Hamadi stressed.
“In such cases of early marriage with little girls, the parents must be blamed, for the principal may not have sufficient information about the members of the family; for example, in Arwa’s condition, she was aged 14 in the contract according to her parents,” added Waleed Yahya al-Eryani, Secretary of the Penalty Group in Jibla Court.
Sources close to the victim of this early marriage told the Yemen Observer’s correspondent in Ibb that the husband did not attend the court lest he be imprisoned, so he authorized another person to divorce her instead.