A doctor in Saudi Arabia was able to stop the wedding of a five and 11 year-old whose family wanted to marry them to protect financial assets. “Thanks to the law that compels spouses to carry out blood analyses before marriage, we were able to stop a wedding with underage girls, among them a five year-old,” said Hani Harsani, the doctor in charge of laboratory analysis in an interview with Saudi daily al-Watan.

“Two sisters came to us accompanied by their parents to undergo pre-marital blood analyses. The first one was five, and the other 11 years-old. When we asked the mother why they wanted to do the tests, she told us that she wanted to marry the girls to cousins to preserve the family’s property rights.”

During the interview, Harsani remembers an episode when a 10-year-old orphan was brought to do pre-marital blood tests by her brother, who wanted to marry the sister to a 40-year-old friend who already had two other wives.

“We cannot technically impede a marriage with a girl of this age. However, we can delay the process (by refusing to carry out the tests),” said Harsani.

“I hope a law can be passed sooner rather than later to establish a minimum age for marriage.”

Pre-marital blood tests are compulsory in Saudi Arabia to ensure the spouses are in good health, but also to prevent the spread of hereditary diseases to the children

AKI

Translated by: Rochelle Terman, SKSW Campaign from the original Persian, Rooz Online.

The 27th Iranian Court District approved of the stoning of a Afsaneh, woman from Shiraz, Iran.

The original stoning order of this woman came from the 5th Court District in Shiraz in Fars Province. It was then appealed to a higher court in the country, who approved the decision under case file 588.

Branch 5 of this court approved the decision on 21 Farvadin 1387 (Iranian calendar) and ordered the sentence of killing by stoning of Afsaneh. In this order, considering to the laws relevant to this file and the statements of the accused, the court came to the conclusion that the defendant purposefully and consciously chose to commit murder. Her partner and accomplice to the murder, a man named Reza, was sentenced to 15 years in jail with 100 lashes.

The defendant’s appeal to a higher court was rejected. The judge in District 27 of the court approved this sentence in 14 Mordad 1387. This comes at a time when the spokesman for the Iranian Judiciary announced in a press conference that Iran would no longer enforce the law of stoning for any of the accused.

Gholamhossein Raesi, head of the Lawyers for Human Rights commission in the Fars province stated: “This order was based on the ‘knowledge’ of ‘feeling’ of one Judge, and contradicts the law of Islam on punishments for adultery.”

He explained that the crime of adultery could be proven two ways. First is based on the confession of the accused. The second is based on eye-witnesses. Therefore, according to law 99 in the Islamic criminal code, the judge’s “knowledge” or “feeling” is illegitimate when trying the crime of adultery.

Gholamhossein Raesi explained that differences exist within the laws themselves and the beliefs of the Islamic leaders concerning this punishment. But he refers to the new Islamic criminal code that was recently ratified in the Majlis (Iranian Parliament), saying: “Even if the order about Afsaneh was given before the approval of the new law in Majlis, the repeat of the punishment of stoning contradicts the current laws enforced our society. The act of stoning requires much discussion among Iranian lawmakers and the international human rights community. Stoning goes against the current law enforced in our society as well as international human rights law. It seems that the lawmakers in Iran are not genuinely interested in stopping this punishment.”

To read original article in Persian/Farsi, click here.

Stop-stoning.org

By Muhammad Bilal

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights criticised the authorities on Monday for not arresting those involved in burying alive women in Balochistan, five months after the so-called honour killings.

The committee – which met here under Senator Latif Khosa – has now directed police and other departments to submit a detailed investigation report on the incident by January 15. Dissatisfied with the progress made so far in the investigation, the committee said “influential people responsible for committing the crime are still at large”. Members have urged police to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Five months on from the killings, it is still not clear whether five women were buried alive, as reported by the media, or two, as reported by police. The Senate body branded the killings ‘a crime against humanity’, and said the incident did not have a precedent in recent history. Latif Khosa — who is also the attorney general of Pakistan – condemned the killings, and said he would himself direct the Balochistan advocate general to take steps to make headway in the probe. Earlier, National Police Bureau Director General Tariq Khosa briefed the committee on the ‘honour killings’ in Naseerabad district of Balochistan and the progress made so far in the investigation.

He said 11 suspects had been arrested, and raids were being made to arrest more people. Representatives of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the National Commission on the Status of Women also briefed the committee on their views on the matter. The committee also directed the Interior Ministry to submit a report on the murder of Taslim Solangi – who was sentenced to death by a jirga in Sindh eight months into her pregnancy.

The committee also took notice of attacks on schools in Swat and threats to female teachers and workers, and asked the Interior Ministry for a report on the subject.

Daily Times

By Malik Siraj Akbar

QUETTA: Aurat Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working for women’s rights, has said violence against women in Balochistan intensified in 2008, but Baloch society still adopts a defensive attitude and justifies the killing of women in the name of honour and tradition.

In a dialogue with media representatives on ‘Problems in accessibility of information about violence against women’ on Monday, the organisation said Baloch women were victims of violence due to widespread illiteracy, entrenched tribal traditions, distorted interpretation of Islam and economic dependence of women on men.

Cases: The organisation said around 600 cases of violence against women were reported in 2008, which included the murder of 89 women in the first nine months of the year. At least 115 women were murdered in cases of honour killing. The reported cases included 255 incidents of women being subjected to domestic violence. People are unwilling to discuss the violence as a majority of Balochistan people justify such acts in the name of tradition, it said. In some other cases, violence against women in rural areas remains unreported in media because of inaccessibility of the area as well as the dominance of men in society, who believe the publication of reports of violence against women amounts to the disrepute of their respective tribes.

The year’s most disturbing news concerning the plight of women came from Naseerabad district in Balochistan, where five women were allegedly buried alive by tribal elders in the name of honour. Federal Minister Mir Israrullah Zehri and Senate Deputy Speaker Jan Muhammad Jamli defended the incident on the Senate floor and called it “a part of Baloch traditions” and the government failed to expose the culprits and the motives behind the killings. The Naseerabad killings still remain a mystery. “Violence against women is a global phenomenon. It takes place in different parts of the world under varying pretexts,” Aurat Foundation Balochistan Co-ordinator Saima Javaid said. She said, “Our biggest concern is that such violence is unabated, rampant and unnoticed.” Dostain Khan Jamaldini, a researcher, said various hurdles hindered objective reporting of women’s issues in the province. He said violence against women is not taken seriously or addressed at the community level.

Confront: Nationalist as well as communal sentiments and a colonial mindset confront those protesting violence against women. Political leaders remain defensive on the issue, and describe media and NGO reporting as an intrusion in internal matters and traditions. Similarly, communal segments of society dismiss such reports as Western propaganda against Islam. “We need to set our house in order before becoming defensive. The poor state of women’s rights is a bitter reality in our society and we cannot ignore this serious matter for long under different subterfuges,” Jamaldini said. The participants of the day-long dialogue agreed that print and electronic media could best highlight violence against women by describing it as a practice being promoted in the name of Islam and tribal traditions. Journalists and scholars should not use unqualified religious leaders as their primary source in write-ups and reports. Those who contend that Islam is responsible for the suppression of women and violence against women are oblivious to the true teachings of the religion. Islam gives equal status to women in the social, educational and economic spheres, according to one of the speakers.

Illahuddin Khilji, another Aurat Foundation representative, said gender discrimination towards women by male lawmakers, journalists and religious scholars contributed to ‘biased reporting’ of events, while their female counterparts often exaggerated the issues in their reports.

Daily Times

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq –and one of the few places in the world–where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.

The practice, and the Kurdish parliament’s refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.

“When the Kurdish people were fighting for our independence, women participated as full members in the underground resistance,” said Pakshan Zangana, who heads the women’s committee in the Kurdish parliament. “But now that we have won our freedom, the position of women has been pushed backwards and crimes against us are minimized.”

Zangana has been lobbying for a law in Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region with its own government, that would impose jail terms of up to 10 years on those who carry out or facilitate female circumcision. But the legislation has been stalled in parliament for nearly a year, because of what women’s advocates believe is reluctance by senior Kurdish leaders to draw international public attention to the little-noticed tradition.

The Kurdish region’s minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn’t think the issue required action by parliament. “Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it,” he said.

The practice of female circumcision is extremely rare in the Arab parts of Iraq, according to women’s groups. They say it is not clear why the practice — common in some parts of Africa and the Middle East — became popular with Iraqi Kurds but not Iraqi Arabs.

Supporters of female circumcision said the practice, which has been a ritual in their culture for countless generations, is rooted in sayings they attribute to the prophet Muhammad, though the accuracy of those sayings is disputed by other Muslim scholars. The circumcision is performed by women on women, and men are usually not involved in the procedure. In the case of Sheelan, her mother informed her father that she was going to have the circumcision performed, but otherwise, he played no role.

Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman’s sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares.

“I would not eat food from the hands of someone who did not have the procedure,” said Hurmet Kitab, a housewife who said she was 91 years old.

Kitab, who lives in the village of Kalar in Kurdistan’s eastern Germian area, where female circumcision is prevalent, has had the procedure done on herself and all her daughters. When asked if she would have her 10-month-old granddaughter Saya circumcised, Kitab said “Of course” and explained that the procedure is painless.

“They just cut off a little bit,” she said, flicking her finger at the top part of a key, which she then dropped on the floor.

Women’s rights groups in Kurdistan are working eagerly to change the perception that the procedure is harmless and that it is required under Islam. They go to villages in rural areas where the practice is most ingrained and tell women and religious leaders of the physical and psychological damage the circumcision can cause. Health experts say the procedure can result in adverse medical consequences for women, including infections, chronic pain and increased risks during childbirth.

Ghamjeen Shaker, a 13-year-old from the Kurdish capital of Irbil, said she is still traumatized from the day she was circumcised. She sits with her legs clenched together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap, as if protecting herself from another operation. Indeed, Shaker says she sometimes dreams that the midwife who circumcised her is coming back to perform the procedure again.

She was 5 when her mother sent her out to buy parsley and then locked her in the front yard of their home with six other girls. “I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t know exactly where they were going to cut,” she recalled. “My family just kept saying, don’t worry, this is a social custom we have been doing forever.”

“They pinned me to the ground, and I just cried and cried,” said Shaker, who spoke barely above a whisper. “I was just so astonished. But now I realize that they want to prevent women from living their lives normally.”

Her mother, Shukria Ismaeel Jarjees, a 38-year-old housewife, said she was forced by her relatives and elderly women in the community to have her daughter circumcised. “I made a huge mistake, and now my daughter is always complaining of pain in her pelvis,” Jarjees said. Her eyes began to fill with tears. “I now advise my daughters to never circumcise their children.”

Shaker hopes to become a social worker focusing on women’s issues, in particular other girls traumatized by female circumcision.

“I want to make sure the world understands they cannot silence girls like this,” she said.

Susan Faqi Rasheed, president of the Irbil branch of the Kurdistan Women’s Union, said that even in the cosmopolitan capital, as many as a third of young girls are circumcised. “When the Kurds hold on to something, they hold on to it strongly,” she said. “So now they hold to Islam more than the Arabs.”

One of the religious leaders who have been less vocal in demanding female circumcisions is Hama Ameen Abdul Kader Hussein, preacher at the Grand Mosque of Kalar and head of the clergymen’s union in Germian. Previously, he preached that female circumcision was required. Now he says it is optional, which Hussein believes has caused the area’s rate of female circumcision to drop from 100 percent to about 50 percent.

“If there is any harm in this exercise,” he said, “we should not do it.”

Despite the outreach efforts, a study of women in more than 300 Kurdish villages by WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, found that 62 percent underwent the procedure.

In Tuz Khurmatu, the most famous practitioner of female circumcision is Maharoub Juwad Nawchas, a 40-year-old midwife with traditional Kurdish tattoos covering her chin. She learned from her mother, who used to perform the procedure for free, though Nawchas now charges 4,000 Iraqi dinars, or just under $3.50, because her husband is disabled and can’t work. She has circumcised about 30 girls a year for the past two decades.

On the day she circumcised Sheelan, the midwife began the ritual by laying down an empty white potato sack to serve as her working area. AK-47 assault rifles hung from the wall of the dingy concrete house, and watermelons rested below.

When Sheelan entered the room, her mother, Nawchas and a local woman placed the girl on a tiny wooden stool the size of a brick. The midwife applied yellow antiseptic to her pelvic area and injected her with lignocaine, an anesthetic. Little children peeked through the window to see what the noise was about.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Sheelan’s mother whispered, as the girl screamed so loudly her face turned red. She tried to bunch up her skirt over her pelvis and shield the area with her hand, but the women jerked her arms back.

Then Nawchas uttered the prayer, made a swift cut, and immediately moved the girl over a pile of ashes to control the bleeding.

The entire ritual took less then 10 minutes.

Back home, Sheelan lay on the floor, unable to move or talk much. She clutched a bag filled with orange soda and candy and barely said anything except that she was in pain.

But she became more animated when asked whether it was worth it to have the operation so her friends and neighbors would be comfortable eating food she prepared. “I would do anything not to have this pain, even if meant they would not eat from my hands,” she rasped slowly.

“I just wish that I could be the way I was before the procedure,” she said.

Washington Post

The Azar Mehr Women’s Association, while expressing concerns over hard and challenging conditions that most Kurdish women are faced with, in their recent news letter have reported that three Kurdish women have set themselves on fire: “During the past month, in different parts of Orumanat, in Kermanshah province, three Kurdish women committed suicide. Based on the latest news, a 16 year-old girl named Sahar Ra’ufi from Paveh City and another girl, Fatemeh Abbass Manesh, who is from Javanrud, have set themselves on fire because of family problems. Both girls lost their lives due to injuries sustained from the burn.”

The report further says that: “At the beginning of the current month, in Salas Babajani County, a 24 year-old woman named Siran Rahimi, who had been married for only a week, due to quarrels with her husband set herself on fire and lost her life.”

Iran Human Rights Voice

Five women were buried alive in the tribal region of Balochistan in Pakistan and only a national outcry led to the arrest of the persons involved — months after the incident had actually happened. The killings had even been defended as “tribal tradition” by some senior members of the Senate, the Parliament’s Upper House.

What “crimes” had these women committed? Three of the women were teenagers who wanted to marry men of their choice. The other two – the mother and an aunt of one of the girls – supported their decision. The women were abducted by men from their tribe, shot and thrown into a ditch while still alive; the older women were buried along with them for protesting, according to a report by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

Across the eastern border in India, a region that was still some days celebrating the Olympic glory of its homegrown pugilist — Vijender Kumar’s bronze medal — was recently shrouded by the hushed whispers of another honor killing. Two girls were killed on their return from a late evening outing, escorted by unidentified men. The entire village is believed to have watched as both were assaulted with sticks and axes, hauled to the cremation ground half-dead and set on fire by their family for the sake of “honor” — quite ironically on Diwali, a day celebrated as the festival of lights in many parts of the country. But what was even more shocking was the evidence of the system’s casual acceptance of this family’s act. Not even a “First Information Report” was registered until a fortnight later.

Numbers of women killed frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished as the concept of family honor tacitly justifies the act in the eyes of the immediate community. And while such incidents elicit attention due to the intrigue and horror attached to them as some primordial custom practiced by certain sequestered communities, the fact is that this form of violence is just a part of a much larger problem of violence against women and an issue that transcends cultures and religions. Complicity by other women in the family and the community only helps strengthen the notion of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family matter and outside of the judicial and public domain. But at the center of the problem of violence against women is the imbalance of gender relations that assume men to be superior to women. And against the background of this subordinate status of women, much of gender violence is considered normal and enjoys social sanction.

When women are considered vessels of family, clan and tribal or community honor, they will almost always be the direct victims of crimes against a community or violence between groups. And one does not have to look too far for evidence of these manifestations of violence in the public sphere, tacitly supported by state and society either by directly perpetrating it or rarely taking proactive measures to curb it and punish the guilty.

In October, the Orissa government in eastern India placed six policemen under suspension for misconduct and negligence of duty in connection with the rape of a nun two months prior, in August, during violence that had consumed the district of Kandhamal, killing nearly 35 people on the discovery of the murder of a Hindu religious leader. Despite a First Information Report filed the very next day, the result of the investigative report and medical findings were not filed for weeks and investigations began only a month after reports started appearing in the media. Police officials claimed they were busy dealing with the law-and-order situation in the district, preventing them from looking into the matter. That the rape of a woman was not considered as much a part of the violence at the time and was sidelined in the face of larger “law and order” concerns is a reminder of not just the manner in which rape and violence against women is perceived even by protectors and upholders of the legal system itself but that it is an accepted collateral of violence of this kind.

Only recently did the West Bengal court (in eastern India) award life imprisonment to two Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists – major coalition partners of the ruling Left Front government in the state – for the 2006 rape and murder of a teenage girl. The girl was among those protesting land acquisition for a car project in her native region of Singur. While the company withdrew their project from Singur earlier this year in the face of continuing protests against land acquisition, the teenager’s charred body was recovered from what were once premises of the project in December 2006. Initially the government had called foul and blamed the death on conspiracy theorists. There have been whispers that this perhaps was only one of several cases of sexual assaults against women during the course of the agitation.

And in this hierarchical structure of gender violence, women from the lower castes of Indian society are even more vulnerable. By virtue of their position in the social structure they are the ones that find themselves the most vulnerable to exploitation of all kinds, while assaults are carried out with impunity with the knowledge that avenues for redress are even fewer and farther in between. Documented evidence and narratives by several human rights groups indicate that sexual abuse and other forms of violence against these women are used as tools for teaching political “lessons” for what is perceived as rebellion or attempts at dislodging the old, existent social order. Threatened by sexual exploitation of various kinds, these women have also been arrested and raped in custody as a means of punishing their male relatives both by the law enforcers themselves or powerful men within their communities.

Many women learn to accept violence very early in life. The family itself socializes them to accept predetermined social relations expressed in unequal division of labor between the sexes and control over the allocation of resources. And it is within the so-called secure walls of the home that women, very often, are most exposed to violence as they grow up watching the violence perpetrated against the other women in the household by the male members of the family. These violent actions are often closely linked to the concept of a woman as property and dependent on a male protector be it father, husband or son.

Despite the recognition of gender-based violence as a human rights violation, which also includes “violence perpetrated or condoned by the state,” a large percentage of women continue to be unprotected against it — whether it be in the context of the family, the community or the state. What is even more tragic is that at every point key social institutions not only fail to be critical of the violence but, in fact, play their role in legitimizing and maintaining the violence. And even as women find their own voice within these spaces, sometimes accepting the violence or negotiating space within it, adding another dimension to their condition are the more passive and insidious forms of violence that work in tandem — like sex selective abortions, sustained nutritional deprivation and delayed health care for female infants, or the unequal allocation of household resources detrimental to the health of the girl child.

RH Reality Check

In recent years, the Pakistani government appears to have made strides in protecting women’s rights. Through Article 25 of the Constitution, as well as the 1996 adoption of the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Pakistani government has promised the country’s disenfranchised women food, social security, housing, education, an adequate standard of living and healthcare.

But these policy commitments have rarely been translated into practice, and have failed to change the lives of many Pakistani women.

Instead, these women continue to face incredible hurdles. The most devastating consequence of under-development in any society is a high fatality rate, and Pakistan has higher infant and maternal mortality rates than many developing countries in both Asia and Africa. The rate of preventable maternal mortality is a symptom of the larger social injustice of discrimination against women and a violation of women’s human rights.

Women in Pakistan are victims of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, including acid throwing and honor killings. For example, in some villages in Pakistan, if a woman tries to marry of her own free will she is said to have brought disgrace upon her family and she may even be murdered. No questions are asked, even though laws exist prohibiting this practice.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and an endless number of NGOs have been fighting for women’s rights for quite some time now. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honour killing victims may be as high as 5,000 women, although no official figures are available in Pakistan on the frequency of this practice.

Pakistan recently implemented laws to combat domestic violence, such as the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act of 2006, but they have done little to bring perpetrators to justice. Naheeda Mehboob Illahi, the deputy attorney general and an expert in family law recently promoted as a Supreme Court judge, has admitted that the laws are not being implemented in their true spirit, which is why in many cases motive is not established and murder is dubbed “an accident”.

While honour killings attract more attention in the media, other social customs are also very detrimental to women. Pait likkhi, literally “written on the stomach”, is one such custom where a girl and boy are betrothed to each other before they are born or in their early teens. Islamic law, in contrast, holds that a husband must be able to support his wife and that both partners must consent to marriage out of their own free will.

Although in 1929, under the tenure of British India, a Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed that prohibits child marriages, tribal customs and traditions still prevail and authorities often ignore these laws because influential feudal lords are involved in the practice.

Swara and vani are also types of child marriages where young girls are forcibly married to members of different clans in order to resolve feuds. Recently, Pakistan’s courts have begun taking serious note of this illegal practice and have attempted to take action against its continuation. But again, those involved tend to be powerful both socially and politically.

Watta satta creates a similar problem. At the time of marriage, both families trade brides. In order for a man to marry off his son, he must also have a daughter to marry off to a member of the bride’s family in return. In this practice, women are treated as saleable commodities rather than human beings.

These practices must stop. The question is when and how. There are two solutions to obstacles facing women in Pakistan, and they must come from both those in power and women themselves.

First, lawmakers need to wake up and acknowledge realities facing Pakistan’s women and take stringent measures to prevent these injustices from occurring. Second, they must make sure the existing laws are fully and properly implemented.

Furthermore, access to all levels of education is crucial for empowering women to participate in the economic, social and political life of their societies. The government needs to put special focus particularly on female education.

Education is the key factor in the prosperity and development of any country. It unlocks a women’s potential, and is accompanied by improvements in the health, nutrition and well being of their families, as well as a brighter and more promising future for generations to come.

Daily News Egypt

By: Mr. Imran Mazher (Rays of Development Organization)

OKARA, PAKISTAN: A man shot dead his sister for eloping with her paramour twice.

According to the details, Anwari Bibi, wife of Amjad Ali Sipra.She was the resident of P-F Noorpur, was washing utensils in her home when her brother Warris with his accomplices Fakhra Sipra and Sajjid Sipra reached there and opened fire on her. She died on the spot. Anwari had eloped with her paramour Ashiq twice and the family had brought her back. Sairpur Police have registered a case and started investigations.

Source:

Ferhan Mazher,

Chairman (Rays of Development Organization, Sargodha, Pakistan)

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved told AFP.

‘The judge has dismissed the plea (filed by the mother) because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty,’ lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday’s court decision.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl’s divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

‘She doesn’t know yet that she has been married,’ Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals (8,000 dollars), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.

Lawyer Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28.

Arab Times