That little girl looks like a living doll to the unsuspecting eye, in reality she is facing a living hell. How old would you put her at…? eight, five, four…actually she is almost five and she is dressed for her wedding. She is about to marry her father’s cousin – he is 28 years old. They live in Saudi Arabia where this ‘custom’ is perfectly legal – her new husband (makes you sick to even say it) will probably have been made to promise that he will not ‘touch’ her until she is at least, say, eleven…but as is the custom he wont wait for too long, those men are not known for being patient while their tiny bride negotiates her way through puberty and beyond, until she at least grows up enough to fear what is in store for her.

As soon as he is able he will consummate the ‘marriage’, she will fall pregnant at an impossibly young age – made possible only through an error of nature which is more to do with her environment than mother nature’s good sense. She will more than likely die an agonising death during childbirth when her barely developed body cannot cope with the demands placed on it by a fully formed baby. This is the vile custom of child marriages - better known to the rest of us as legalised paedophilia.

There is some good news on the horizon for little girls like the one pictured here; human rights lawyers in Yemen and Saudi Arabia are fighting to have this repugnant custom declared illegal for girls aged under 17. Naturally as one would expect in such a tribal, patriarchal society there is plenty of opposition from the male powers-that-be, but hopefully the recent case of the little ten year old Yemen girl who was granted a divorce from her much-older husband will set the precedent for a change in attitude, and right now a 12 year old girl in Saudi Arabia is fighting to divorce her eighty year old husband (just turns your stomach…). The United Nations are said to be keen to be involved in outlawing this horrible and unnecessary practice world-wide, let’s see if just for once they can justify their positions and enormous salaries.

If this has a positive outcome and those lawyers do bring about change in this activity then I will hold those human rights advocates in a new esteem…but only IF!