Mission & Justice

1/11/08

Pakistani police have raided an illegal child wedding in the city of Karachi, arresting the children’s parents and the Muslim cleric carrying out the ceremony. A court freed the parents on bail on Saturday, a day after police raided the wedding ceremony between a seven-year-old boy and a girl aged five. The parents said the wedding had been arranged to end an eight-year feud between the two families. Marriage below the age of 18 is illegal in Pakistan.

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Nasser Arrabyee; 23/4/08

Human rights activists and lawyers should put pressure on the government to ban marriage of young girls, said a Yemeni lawyer. Lawyer Shatha Nasser, who defended an 8-year-old girl who was divorced last week in a Yemeni court, called all civil society organisations and human rights activist to form a coalition for amending the current law which allows marriage of children under 15. “Our next step now is to do all that we can to make the minimum marriage age in Yemen 18 years,” Shatha told Gulf News. “But this cannot happen if there is no cooperation between lawyers and human right groups,” she said.

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