Childhood Fence succeeds in freezing the marriage of two children in Sana’a for 5 years.

The Child Protection Organization (Siyaj) has frozen the marriage of two Yemeni children for five years. The parents of the two children (Na’ma Abdullah Al-Shwaiter, 13 years old, and Hafez Mansour Hamid Al-Hasani, 10 years old) committed to the organization in writing not to proceed with the marriage until the children reach an age where they are capable of making appropriate decisions regarding their marriage and have the freedom to choose. The Monitoring and Advocacy Center assigned legal support officer, lawyer Akram Nu’man, and complaints and reports specialist, Nour Al-Jama’i, to follow up on the case, which culminated in the aforementioned commitment. For their part, the children confirmed that they do not want to marry at all, but their parents proceeded with the marriage contract. The father of the boy (the husband), Hafez Mansour, confirmed to the organization that he proceeded with the marriage contract to protect Na’ma from the interference of her parents, who had married off her two sisters, Sa’ada and… And “Amina” and her husband, who were the same age years ago, are now divorced and suffering from numerous health, social, psychological, and economic problems. This success in combating child marriage in Yemen is the second in less than two weeks, after the organization managed to prevent the marriage of 12-year-old Aisha Ibrahim Muqrabish in the coastal district of Al-Luhayyah in the northwest of the country. The Child Protection Organization holds the Yemeni Presidency and the Council of Ministers responsible for the unjustified legislative vacuum on this sensitive issue. It calls on them to expedite the enactment of national legislation criminalizing the marriage of girls under the age of 16 and granting judges discretionary power to authorize the marriage of any girl aged 17-18 if no harm is caused and her best interests are confirmed. It also calls for addressing the other causes of the prevalence of child marriage, as legislation alone will not be able to curb the problem. #Yemen #Fence #Childhood #Child #EarlyMarriage