by SBS Staff
An 11 year-old Yemeni girl has drawn the world's attention to the issue of child brides after denouncing her arranged marriage in an impassioned video online.
In a remarkable video first posted to LiveLeak, 11-year-old Nada Al-Ahdal fiercely declared: "I am not an item for sale, I'm a human being and I would rather die than get married at this age."
She tells the camera how she ran away to her uncle's house after her family married her off to an older man for money.
"What about the innocence of childhood? What have the children done wrong? Why do you marry them off like that?"
"They said that I couldn't leave and even threatened to kill me if I went back to my uncle."
She also said that while she had solved her problem, many other child brides had no options, and suicide was a commonly contemplated solution.
"I've decided that I have two choices: to leave or to die. So I chose the first. I would have had no life, no education. Don't they have any compassion?"
"Some children decided to throw themselves into the sea, they’re dead now. This is not normal for innocent children. They have killed our dreams, they have killed everything inside us."
SBS Staff
Source: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1791524/Yemeni-child-brides-protest-gains-global-attention
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