Hamas in Gaza is allowing the practice of marrying off children to older men.
In 2012, of about 17,000 marriages were registered in the courts of the Gaza Strip, 35% were cases in which the brides were under 17 years old. These marriages are concluded without the courts knowing the girls’ real ages. Meanwhile, about 2,700 divorce cases were registered in the same year, and in 25% of these the wives were underage, Bakr Azzam, a lawyer specializing in Sharia issues, told Al-Monitor.
Mariam explained that due to her young age she wasn’t capable of meeting the demands of married life.
“I was taken away from my small toys, taken out of my school forcibly and delivered to my husband whom I had only seen once, in front of the judge who officiated my marriage contract,” she added.
Mariam recently ran away from her husband’s house and returned to her father's, after concluding that she could not bear to stay with her husband. He dates other women under the excuse that his wife is young and thinks like a child, not living up to the intellect of a man of his age. Mariam’s husband also beats her whenever they have an argument.
“When I told my father about this, he told me, ‘This is normal and most young people are facing such a situation these days,’ but I did not accept it,” she said.
Mariam, who now wants a divorce, is not the only underage girl who was forced to marry despite her physical and mental unreadiness for marital life.
Sarah had a similar experience, but for different reasons.
As she spoke to Al-Monitor, Sarah looked at a photo of herself when she was still single. She had a bright face and childlike features. Today, however, she has become a girl with a scrawny body, a slim face and caved-in eyes that look very tired.
“I got married when I was 16 years old. My father and my brothers forced me to marry a 17-year-old boy so that they would not have to pay my living expenses and could get rid of my father’s accumulated debt,” she said, her face somber.
She pointed out that marital problems began only one week into the marriage due to the demands, made by both her husband and his family, that a girl of her age could not meet. “My family did not take into account the fact that I was still a child,” she said.
But I'm sure that if we give them a 'state' they will stop treating their daughters as property to be bought and sold.
