Two Yemeni divorcees.
For the first time in Yemen's history, police have intervened
to prevent the wedding of an adult man to a child bride.
The child, Hiba, was due to have been married on 8 November in the southern city of Taiz.
The issue of young Yemeni girls being married off by their families has drawn growing international concern.
Some of the families are motivated by the traditional dowry system.
Hiba's story is not unusual in Yemen.
Yemen's child marriages, and abuses resulting from them, have recently come into the media spotlight in cases like that of the
8-year-old bride who died on her wedding night. The women's rights group Equality Now has been reporting on some of these girls' experiences. Here's just a small snippet that was included in the BBC report:
Wafa, it says, was married at 11 to a 40-year-old who raped and tortured her. A lawyer hired by the group and the Yemeni Women Union managed to arrange her divorce.
Another 11-year-old, Fawziya, died in childbirth.
Salwa, a 12-year-old girl, killed herself by throwing herself off a roof.
A recent, widely-reported case, which was not officially corroborated, of an eight-year-old girl said to have died of internal injuries after her wedding night, prompted renewed calls for action.
A fuller and more detailed list
is available at Equality Now. (Trigger warning for graphic details of sexual assault to minors.)
Equality Now is also pushing for a minimum age law to be enacted for marriage in Yemen, but so far there is no law on the books protecting Yemeni girls from child marriage. Sadly, although this marriage to Hiba was stopped by Yemen police, there is nothing preventing the wedding from occurring on a future date.
It's unbelievable that this move to stop a single child wedding is considered progress. I hope the media continues to highlight these stories, and that organizations like Equality Now keep the pressure on Yemen to pass a law protecting children from such unimaginably abusive fates.