Yemen Aprile 2010
Autore: Niccolò Rinaldi
Oggetto: Yemen Aprile 2010
Testo: On Friday 9 April 2010, a twelve-year-old girl in Yemen, Elham Mahdi al Assi, died of internal bleeding just five days after she was married to a man in his twenties. The injuries from which she ultimately died resulted from being brutally sexually assaulted by her new husband, according to the Yemen Observer, one of the country’s leading newspapers. There is no minimum age set for marriage in Yemen and rape of a woman by her husband is not criminalised. According to a 2008 study by the Gender Development Research and Studies Centre at Sana’a University, 52.1% of girls are under 18 when they wed, compared with 6.7% of boys. A proposed law that had initially been approved by the Yemeni Parliament set the age for marriage at 17 for girls and 18 for boys; following opposition by conservative MPs, the proposed legislation was sent back to the Parliament’s Sharia committee, which recommended that no age for marriage be set. A number of clerics followed that up by issuing a fatwa in March 2010, banning setting an age for marriage on the grounds that it goes against Sharia. As a result, grassroots activists who are fighting for the introduction of legislation to set a minimum age for marriage have been the target of increasingly savage attacks over the past month, branded as infidels and secularists for their opposition to early marriage and other harmful practices that not only violate basic human rights but also put the lives of women and girls at risk.
Can the Commission indicate:
1. if it does not consider that these actions put at stake the Yemeni Government’s commitment to fulfil its obligations with respect to human rights, equality of women and promotion of the living conditions of women and girls under the 1998 Cooperation Agreement between the European Community and the Republic of Yemen, particularly article 12?
2. what action it has taken and/or it will take in order to urge the Yemeni authorities to ensure immediately the promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls, particularly with respect to setting a minimum age for marriage consistent with international human rights principles and the criminalisation of rape of a woman by her husband?
3. what action it has taken and/or it will take to urge the Yemeni authorities to ensure an end to harassment of lawyers, grassroots activists and other human rights defenders?
