In Yemen, the culture of arranged marriage involving girls as young as 9 to 10 years is still very common. Unfortunately, this retrogressive culture of extreme early marriage has been the sole cause of high maternal mortality in the Islamic country.

In a case that has forced the human right activists, fighting for the rights of women in Yemen to sound a loud alarm, a 12-year old girl who had been forced to marry at a tender age died after a stillbirth. Aisha was confirmed dead after a prolonged labour, which saw her deliver a dead baby only to die shortly thereafter herself.

 Kids as young as 8-10 years are literally infants. Men who shameless subject such young kids to the cruelty of adult sex and reproduction should be looked at as killers or even brutes.  The unfortunate situation here is that the Islamic tradition glorifies male chauvinism and is socially constructed to oppress women, am sorry if this sounds intolerant, but how far would anybody tolerate such cruelty to the girl child? This explains why Imams gleefully superintend over such marriages in Mosques without any sense of wrongdoing or guilt.

Secondly, the legislators here who are mostly men do not have any regards for women friendly laws. That is why, whereas here in Uganda, anybody who has sex with a girl below the age of 18 faces the criminal charge of defilement, in Yemen sleeping about with infants appears to be an acceptable social practice allowed by society. In the case of Uganda, this law which makes it a capital offence to assault the modesty of a child sexually has seen many Ugandans go to jail for the crime of defilement.

It is true that the presence of such laws may not completely stop the sexual violation of young girls by adults, but it completely makes marriage to young kids an abhorable illegality.

In this Yemeni case, the death of this child mother should jolt the Human Right Activists in Yemen to do more to fight this crime against children. I am glad that the Yemeni legislators have since considered revising the age of consent from 10 to 15. This is still too little a stride, but it is step in the right direction. The world should make child marriage as repugnant as it possibly can be so that the death of this little mother and her dead baby should teach the world something about the dangers of child marriage and reproduction.