Child Marriages

Child Marriages

Child marriage is an illegal yet thriving practice in many countries dealing with poverty and families who have few resources to support their families and to provide for their children's futures. Child marriages are so common that 51 million girls younger than the age of 18 are already married. At that rate, 100 million more girls, or 25 thousand girls each day will be married over the next decade before they turn 18. Also, early marriage of young girls can have many effects on these girls' futures and bodies. Marrying at a young age can cause a young girl to lose her chances at a valued education that can result in a poor lifestyle when they grow older and have children. Also, young girls bodies can be greatly affected by being married off young because many of the men these girls are married to are two to three times their age and force them to take part in sexual activity before they are mature. If these young girls are forced to have sexual relations with their partners and become pregnant their babies are five times more likely to die during pregnancy than women in their twenties. Also, pregnancy in these young girls can lead to fistula, a disease that prevents girls from being able to control their urinary and bowel movements (Child Brides, 1).

Most young girls in the world dream of having the perfect wedding. They dream of spending thousands of dollars on decorations, having the biggest wedding cake, inviting all of their friends to be there to watch them be married, and last but not least all girls dream of having the perfect man meet them at the end of the isle. In most cases that is how every girls wedding seems to go, but for a young Yemeni girl by the name of Nujood Ali, that is not how her wedding day worked out. In "I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced" Nujood Ali was just a normal ten year old girl living in Yemen, going to school every day and playing outside with her friends. In Yemen it is illegal to marry until age fifteen, but most fathers of young girls illegally marry their daughters off early to protect them from being kidnapped and raped. Usually these young girls are married off around the age of nine or ten and most of the time the men that their fathers marry them off to are three times their age. One day, Nujood's life change drastically. Her father informed her that she was going to be married off to Faez Ali Thamer, who was in his thirties at the time, and that she had to move away from home and move in with Thamer. Thamer promised Nujood's father that he wouldn't touch her until she was mature enough for sexual relationships (Ali, Nujood).

Faez Ali Thamer's promise to Nujood's father didn't last too long, as the abuse to Nujood began on the day of their wedding. It all started when Nujood was thrown into an old truck with her new family and where they made the long drive through rough terrain to her new home hours away. At her new home she was forced to do work around the house with Thamer's mother and there was no way around doing anything she was told. She wasn't allowed to play outside with children her age