The controversy over legalising a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia continued as members of parliament and human rights activists likened marrying minor girls to the slave trade, local press have reported.

 

Activists in the Saudi parliament and the Human Rights Association lashed out at the idea that minor girls should be permitted to marry following comments by Saudi’s highest religious authority Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheikh that 10-year-old girls should be permitted to marry.

 

 

Sheikh Abdul-Aziz’s support of child marriage appears to be contingent on each party’s consent. In statements last year he noted that Islamic law requires both parties agree to the marriage contract. 

Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which makes 15 years old the minimum marrying age for girls, said Hussein al-Sharif, head of the National Human Rights Association (NHRA) Mecca office.

NHRA intervened in several child marriage cases throughout the kingdom and managed to prevent marriages of underage girls with the help of the Emirs and Sheikhs of those regions, he said. The association is also working with authorities on a law to criminalise violence against women and children. Setting a legal age for marriage would be part of that law.