WUNRN
Photo by: Kevin R.
Wexler/The Record/MCT
By DAVID E. MILLER / THE MEDIA LINE - 06/03/2011
The case of a
nine-year-old girl given away in marriage by her father to a 58-year-old man because
of argument with his wife shocked many Saudis. Widespread media coverage brought
the plight of child brides to the fore in the oil-rich Gulf kingdom where no
law currently protects children like "the Unayzah girl," as she was
called after her home town, from the misery of early marriage.
That was two years ago. Finally, the Shoura Council,
"The only way to stop this legal rape is to pass a law," Wajeha
Al-Huwaider, a Saudi woman activist, told The Media Line. "They can start
with age 15, like most Gulf countries, and then they gradually increase
it."
The practice of families marrying off their underage girls to elderly, usually
wealthy, men has long been criticized by local and international human rights
organizations. But the most conservative Saudis, including many in the
religious establishment, are loath to disrupt age-old customs that are often
assumed to have a basis in Islam as well.
Thus many activists are sceptical that the minimum age will see its way into
the law anytime soon. Huwaider said Saudi Arabia's decision makers were not
"brave enough to protect the little girls,” a view echoed by Khuloud
Al-Fahad, a Saudi women's rights activist from Dhahran, who said she welcomed
the Shoura Council's vote.
"I'm not optimistic at all that this will become law," Al-Fahad told
The Media Line. "The radical Islamists are the ones who decide, and they
don't believe in women's rights."
The proposed ban of May-December weddings comes amid a wider effort to make
marriage law friendlier to women. The planned changes would be a small advance
for women in a country where their rights are among the most severely
constrained in the world -- banned from driving, voting in what few elections
there are, or mixing with men who aren’t related to them.
A proposed amendment to the law would make it easier for Saudis to marry
foreigners and limit the age difference allowed between men and women who marry
in
Al-Fahad said conservatives justify child marriage by arguing that the Prophet
Muhammad married his beloved wife Aisha when she was nine. They then accuse
domestic opponents of child marriage of being un-Islamic and they have the
backing of
"It is wrong to claim that marrying a girl under the age of 15 is
unlawful," Al Al-Sheikh asserted girls when the debate on child marriage
peaked in 2009. "When a female passes the age of ten or twelve, she is
ready for marriage, and anyone who claims otherwise wrongs her."
Al-Fahad said that as troubling as the phenomenon was, marrying off young girls
is still quite rare in Saudi society and mostly limited to rural areas. She
insisted that the majority of Saudis condemn the practice.
Official data recently published in
Moreover,
"Marriage of underage girls is a murder of innocence and a violation of
childhood," Zoheir Al-Harithi, a Shoura Council member who tabled the proposal
told the Saudi daily Okaz. "Minors are financially and physically
exploited; they cannot grasp the consequences of this connection nor fathom its
repercussions."
Last January, the Shoura Council for
the first time defined childhood as the age between birth and 18. But the
council deliberately excluded the matter of child marriages from the debate.
Council member Al-Harithi said he believed the international treaties are a
secondary reason to support legislation banning chid marriage.
"More important is that we have a social problem and legal-humanitarian
one, which we are not embarrassed to admit, especially considering that [this
issue] has started affecting our lives and the future of our children," he
told Okaz.