Author Topic: Saudi Girl, 12, Married Off to 80-Year-Old Man (Read 7236 times)

SonnenKinder · « **on:** February 14, 2010, 06:14:29 PM »

Buraidah, Saudi Arabia (TML) – Saudi women’s rights advocates are outraged after a 12-year-old girl was sold by her father into marriage with an 80-year-old man.

A Saudi father, whose name has not been released, sold his 12-year-old daughter to his 80-year old cousin for the equivalent of $22,600. The elderly man, who lives in the city of Buraidah, stands accused of raping the girl after the wedding. He has previously married three other young girls.

The girl’s mother, who had objected strongly to the marriage, took the case to local media after her lawyer’s efforts to get it legally annulled failed.

After the case was publicized, the public prosecutor of Al-Qassim Province is said to have set up a special committee to look into the case.

“They say they’re going to look into it but nothing will really happen,” Eman Al Nafjan, a Saudi blogger and women’s rights advocate told The Media Line. “Even if they solve this case, they are not going to recommend a new law to the king. We should set a legal minimum age at which girls can be married.”

“Without a law we get people like this 80 year old guy who takes advantage of the system to fulfill his sick obsession with little girls,” she wrote on her blog. “Where else in the world can a man openly say that he is in a polygamous marriage with four underage girls and not get arrested? At this rate we might as well start a tourism industry to attract rich Muslim pedophiles.”

The girl’s parents are divorced and the marriage is understood to have been arranged on the initiative of the father, who told the local newspaper that he did so on the basis of the girl’s physical development, not her age.

Child marriages in Saudi Arabia have made international news a number of times over the past year. In April there was international outcry when a Saudi judge refused to grant a divorce to an eight-year-old girl who had been married off by her father to a 47-year-old man as part of a loan repayment agreement, and in August a 10-year-old bride ran away from her 80-year-old husband and sought refuge at her aunt’s house. After ten days in hiding, the girl was returned to her husband by her father.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi Arabia has signed and ratified, defines a child as any person under the age of 18 and Article 16.2 of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, states that “The marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.”

Author Topic: Saudi Girl, 12, Married Off to 80-Year-Old Man (Read 7236 times)

SonnenKinder

Saudi Girl, 12, Married Off to 80-Year-Old Man

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