In at least 117 countries, child marriage is legal.
According to the UN’s website, girls who marry as a child are more susceptible to contracting HIV/AIDS and having complications due to childbirth and pregnancy simply because their bodies are not ready.
Child brides are more likely to experience physical, sexual and psychological abuse from their husbands.
In Sudan, child marriage is legal and marital rape is not a recognized as a crime.
#JusticeforNoura
Beginning in May, the hashtag and movement #JusticeforNoura began circulating and gaining attention. Backed by international celebrities, people began demanding the release of 19-year-old Noura Hussein, who killed her husband after he raped her. She was subsequently put on a death row.
After months of praying for a different outcome for Noura, her life was spared last week. Instead of execution, she will serve a 5-year prison term.
A Sudanese appeals court overturned her death sentence, according to her lawyer, Abdelaha Mohamad.
A court in Omdurman, Sudan’s second largest city, originally found Noura guilty of premeditated murder. When her husband’s family declined a monetary settlement, she was sentenced to death by hanging.
Who is Noura?
Miss Hussein is the second of eight children. She grew up in the village of al-Bager, which is about 40 km (25 miles) south of the capital Khartoum.
Noura had dreams of an education and being a judge.
When she was 16, her dreams had to put on hold. Her 32-year-old cousin, Abdulrahman Mohamed Hammad, proposed marriage to her. However, Noura did not want this marriage. She had no desire to marry or have kids at that time.
Despite being vocal about her objections, she received pressure from her family, especially from her father.
Her dad, Hussein, believed that marriage would be the most honorable thing for his daughter to follow through with.
“Many young girls in the area were getting pregnant and having illegitimate children,” Hussein said in an interview with BBC.
Because girls around Noura’s age were having babies out of wedlock, her father feared the same fate for her. Out of wedlock births still confront heavy stigmatization, and that means less of a chance of having a husband or respectable reputation in the future.
Also, denying family elders is not well-received; their opinions and wishes are held in high regard.
After being coerced into marriage in 2015, Noura was permitted to live in her family home for two years until she was requested to act as a wife to her husband. She moved in with him in April of 2017.
Upon arriving at his house, he repeatedly made sexual advances at her even though she consistently told him she was not interested. Following the ninth day of Noura’s refusal to be intimate with him, Abdulrahman invited three his male family members over to tear off her clothes and hold her down while he raped her.
Noura recounts that memory:
On the ninth day his relatives came, his uncle told me to go to the bedroom. I said no so he dragged me by my arm into the bedroom and his cousin slapped me. All of them tore at my clothing. His uncle held me down by my legs and each of the other two held down my arms. He stripped and had me while I wept and screamed. Finally, they left the room. I was bleeding, I slept naked.
The following day, the husband attempted the same thing.
The next day he grabbed me, threw me on the bed and tried to climb on top of me. I was fighting back and my hand found a knife under the pillow. We began grappling over the knife. He cut my hand and bit down on my shoulder.
I ran to my parent’s house. I had no idea how I got there. I was still carrying the knife.
According to Noura’s mother’s account, that knife was meant to kill herself. Noura would rather die than live in an unwanted marriage.
Why Do Child Marriages Exist?
Child marriages persist because of poverty and tradition.
An 11-year-old Sudanese girl named Amal is currently seeking a divorce from her 38-year-old abusive husband.
According to UNICEF, more than a third of Sudan’s girls will be made wives before their 18th birthday. Twelve percent of them are married prior to turning 15.
Sudan is home to the lowest legal age in Africa. The law says that they [girls] can marry once they reach maturity, which is 10 years.
Laws like this remain because of societal beliefs. Unmarried women face more stigmatization. People will speculate that they are infertile, essentially useless.
The Northeast African nation has recently joined the African Union campaign to end child marriage, although little has been implemented.
Featured Image via Wikimedia Commons.
