Saudi Arabia Mulls Ban on Child Marriages

The girl was said to have been shaking as she approached the witness stand. She hitched up her black ‘abaya’ as she mounted the steps, and composed herself as she told the Saudi court that she no longer wanted to divorce her elderly husband.

The girl, who is just 12 years old, said that she did not want to challenge her father’s wishes for her marriage last year to an 80-year-old man.

“I agree to the marriage. I have no objection,” she told the court in Buraidah, in the Al-Qasim Province of Saudi Arabia.

“This is in filial respect to my father and obedience to his wish,” she added.

The announcement came as a surprise to her lawyers and human rights officials.

Just a month before, she had begged journalists to save her from the marriage. Her mother had claimed that she had been raped and had filed for divorce on the girl’s behalf.

The marriage was arranged by the girl’s father in exchange for a dowry of 85,000 riyals (US$22,667). However because the girl is underage, the money was transferred to her father.

The couple was married last September.

The case is the latest in a long line of child marriages in Saudi Arabia, where the practice is heavily ingrained in tribal custom.
There is no minimum age for marriage in the hard-line Sunni country, and a young woman is under the guardianship of her father.

However, after it was first reported in January, this case has stirred debate in Saudi Arabia about whether laws need to be introduced to curb the practice of child marriage.

Despite the case being dropped by the girl’s mother, the country’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) is planning to intervene and pursue divorce proceedings on the girl’s behalf.

A lawyer, Sultan bin Zahim, has been appointed by the state rights organization and is currently reviewing the case, he told Reuters.
“[HRC] became involved in this case as a public rights issue that concerns the Saudi community ... This case is still valid even after the mother withdrew,” Zahim said.

This is the first time the commission has intervened in a case of child marriage. The issue has previously been seen as a family matter and outside the remit of the state.

Religious clerics have defended the practice on the basis that the Prophet Muhammed was said to have married a nine-year-old girl named Ayesha.

The kingdom’s most senior religious authority, grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, defended the practice to a Riyadh university audience last year.

“If a girl exceeds 10 or 12 then she is eligible for marriage, and whoever thinks she is too young, then he or she is wrong and has done her an injustice,'' he was quoted at the time as saying by newspaper Al Hayat.

“Our mothers and before them our grandmothers married when they were barely 12,” he added. “Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age,“ and those who say women should not marry before 25 years are following a ”bad path.”

However, there are signs that attitudes could be changing. Another senior religious figure, Sheikh Abdullah al-Manie, said last month that using the example of the Prophet’s marriage, 14 centuries ago, “cannot be equated with child marriages today because the conditions and circumstances are not the same.”

“It is a grave error to burden a child with responsibilities beyond her years,” he said, in comments given to the Saudi Gazette. “Marriage should be put off until the wife is of a mentally and physically mature age and can care for both herself and her family.”

Late last year, a Yemeni girl Fawziyah Abdullah Youssef, died during childbirth. She was 12 years old.

The practice of child marriages is particularly ingrained in Yemen, as it is elsewhere in the Arab world.

Some 37 percent of Yemeni between the ages of 20 and 24 were married before they turned 18, according to United Nations figures.

In other countries within the region, such as Afghanistan, nearly half of all marriages involve brides under the age of 16.
However, many analysts have pointed out that child marriage also violates Islamic law on two counts.

First, a marriage contract is only valid if husband and wife voluntarily consent, which a minor is unable to do. Secondly, the dowry paid by a husband is the property of the wife, not her father, who would control it in the case of a minor.

Saudi columnist Amal Al Zahid said that allowing child marriages was a “crime against childhood.”

“The trafficking of child brides—a most reactionary practice that takes us back to the days of concubines [and] slave girls,” should be outlawed “with absolutely no exceptions,” she wrote.

Some Arab countries, including Tunisia, Jordan, and Syria, have set a legal minimum marriage age.

However, Saudi Arabia has not yet followed suit, despite a recommendation from the HRC to fix 15 as the legal marriage age.

Despite that, there have appeared signs that things could change. Particularly, if the HRC intervenes in annulling the marriage even though the mother has dropped the case, it could set a legal precedent.

The influential daughter of Saudi King Abdullah, Princess Adela bint Abdullah, made a statement last week over the marriage of the 12-year-old girl.

“I, personally, and many specialists in social and education fields, share the opinion” that it is in violation of children’s rights, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported.

“A child has the right to live her childhood and not be forced to get married. Even an adult would not accept that,” she said.