http://www.smh.com.au/world/yemen-child-forced-into-marriage-dies-20100408-rvaj.html
Yemen child forced into marriage dies April 9, 2010 SANAA: A 13-year-old Yemeni girl who had been forced into marriage died five days after her wedding when she suffered a rupture in her sex organs and haemorrhaging, a local human right's organisation said. Ilham Mahdi al-Assi died last Friday in al-Thawra hospital in Hajja province, the Shaqaeq Arab Forum for Human Rights said in a statement quoting a medical report. She was married last week in a traditional arrangement known as ''swap marriage'' in which the brother of the bride also married the sister of the groom, it said. ''The child Ilham has died as a martyr due to the abuse of children's lives in Yemen,'' the non-government organisation said. Her death is a ''flagrant example'' of the results of opposing the ban on child marriage in Yemen, which is leading to ''killing child females'', it said. The marriage of young girls is widespread in Yemen, which has a strong tribal structure. The death of a 12-year-old girl in childbirth in September illustrated the case of the country's ''brides of death'', many of whom are married even before puberty. Controversy has heightened in Yemen recently over a law banning child marriage by setting a minimum age of 17 for women and 18 for men. Thousands of women demonstrated outside parliament last month, answering a call by Islamist parties opposing the law. Agence France-Presse [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
