Safa is 14. Her mother died earlier this year. She has no brothers or sisters. And a few weeks ago, as the crisis took hold, her father married her to an elderly man, afraid that if he were killed in the hostilities, no one would be left to protect her.
Safa is 14. Her mother died earlier this year. She has no brothers or sisters. And a few weeks ago, as the crisis took hold, her father married her to an elderly man, afraid that if he were killed in the hostilities, no one would be left to protect her.
“Safa’s words show how war can strip away protection at every turn,” Francesco Galtieri, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative in Yemen, told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday, speaking via video link from Aden.
Hers is “a stark reminder of the impossible choices some families are facing and the devastating consequences, particularly for girls,” he said.
Fighting in parts of Yemen has intensified to levels not seen since 2020, and displacement from the west coast and Taiz has tripled: nearly 300,000 people have been driven from their homes, more than half of them women and children.
More than a third of the displaced families are led by a woman.
In the displacement sites where they land, women and girls face heightened risks of sexual violence, harassment, exploitation, and forced and child marriage; threats that – layered on top of loss and uncertainty – are wearing down their mental and psychosocial health.
by UN News Married off at 14: In Yemen’s war, women and girls suffer ‘devastating consequences’
