11-year-old Yemeni girl opts for death over marriage
Nada al-Ahdal
Nada al-Ahdal, an 11-year-old Yemeni girl, revealed in a Youtube video that she would rather die than to abide by her parents' arrangement of a forced marriage.
"Go ahead and marry me off - I'll kill myself," she said in the video, posted July 8.
Staring straight into the camera, the 11-year-old, unfazed and unflinching, leaves no point about her parents' abuse unaddressed.
"I would have no life, no education. Don't they have any compassion? What kind of upbringing did they get?" she said.
One of eight children, al-Ahdal was taken in by her uncle, Abdel Salam al-Ahdal, at age three, only to be married off when a Yemeni expatriate living in Saudi Arabia asked her parents for her hand in marriage.
Her mother had arranged the marriage for profit, al-Ahdal said in an interview with National Yemen.
When her uncle found out that his young niece was being forced to marry against her will, he intervened and persuaded the man to take back his request.
"I called the groom and told him Nada was no good for him," he said. "I told him she did not wear the veil and he asked if things were going to remain like that. I said 'yes' because she chose it."
He said he stood by his niece especially because he did not want her to end up in the same way as al-Ahdal’s aunt, who burned herself after being forced to marry at 13.
Upon finding that her parents were attempting to force her into marriage again, al-Ahdal ran away from home. Her uncle found her and received permission to live with his niece after informing the authorities.
Unfortunately, al-Ahdal is not the only one subject to the harsh realities of child marriage in Yemen.
More than a quarter of Yemeni women get married before they turn 15, according to a report in 2010 by the Social Affairs Ministry. Parents, overwhelmed by abject poverty, reluctantly resort to child marriage, pocketing the hundreds of dollars they receive for the bride.
“Some children decided to throw themselves into the sea. They’re dead now. They have killed our dreams, they have killed everything inside us,” al-Ahdal said.
Although the law previously set 15 as the minimum age at which Yemeni citizens can get married, the parliament annulled the law in the 1990s, giving parents the choice to decide when their children can get married.
Al-Ahdal’s Youtube post is a small whisper of a nationwide cry against the practice of child marriage that is entrenched in Yemen’s customs.
“My mother, my family, believe me when I say: I’m done with you,” she said. “You’ve ruined my dreams.”