Eight-year-old wife puts Saudi laws in spotlight

A COURT in Saudi Arabia preparing to hear a plea for divorce from an eight-year-old girl should have little difficulty in determining grounds for incompatibility: the husband is half a century older.

The child was married off by her father without her knowledge, the Saudi newspaper al-Watan said yesterday. The girl's mother is understood to be pushing for the marriage to be annulled, although her father opposes the move.

The case is among a recent spate of marriages involving very young girls reported by the Saudi media where there is strong criticism of the practice.

"In my opinion, old men who want to marry girls at the age of their granddaughters are mentally sick and need psychological treatment," Nourah al-Khereiji, a columnist in the English language daily, Arab News, wrote at the weekend.

Such unions have been denounced widely by local human rights activists who say they harm children and undermine the institution of marriage. Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the Kingdom's top cleric, recently joined in the condemnation.

"Islam has stipulated that both parties agree to the marriage contract," the cleric said.

"The woman must express real consent to the suitor, and a guardian must not impose his choice of husband on her … or force his son to marry someone he doesn't want."

Child protection groups say girls are often given away in return for substantial dowries or as a result of old customs in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

But some clerics have warned that such marriages could lead young girls into adultery to satisfy sexual urges that their elderly husbands cannot satisfy. Saudi Arabia's divorce rate has soared to 60 per cent from 25 per cent in the past two decades.

"As most of the cases take place in remote villages where there is poverty and illiteracy, we need to launch a campaign to make people aware of the social and moral implications of such marriages," Ms Khereiji wrote. "The mother should not hesitate to inform the police if the father insists on marrying his child to an old man."

In another case, the Kingdom's Human Rights Commission intervened to delay by five years the marriage of a ten-year-old girl to a man in his 70s. Her father was to receive a dowry of 150,000 Saudi riyals – about 21,000.

Ms Khereiji wrote: "Fathers like these consider their daughters to be slaves, selling them to the highest bidder."

Activists are now calling for legislation to set a minimum age for marriage.

"There are different (religious] opinions regarding the marriages, which is why we need the government to settle the issue through legislation," said Sheik Muhammad al-Nujaimi, a strong clerical opponent of child marriages.