JEDDAH: Health Minister Hamad Al-Manie responded yesterday to a letter sent by the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) regarding child marriage by asserting that such practice could inflict physical and psychological damage to the young girls.
The NSHR had sent a letter to the minister regarding the guidelines and procedures surrounding how premarital testing should be performed as related to marriages of young girls.
In his response Al-Manie underscored the adverse health effects that pregnancy can have on young girls, including anemia, miscarriage and high blood pressure, which can lead to kidney failure, hemorrhaging, and seizures. He also mentioned that there is a significant increase in cesarean sections and mortality resulting from complications during childbirth by girls.
In addition, to these health effects, other consequences of underage marriage also can have detrimental effects on the unborn children of underage spouses. Citing the same report, Al-Manie also said that suffocation of the fetus within the mother’s womb could occur from intense restriction of blood necessary in feeding the unborn child.
In addition, premature delivery, and issues in delayed development of digestive system and lung development resulting in respiratory problems, blindness, deafness, and brain paralysis have also been noted as physical consequences of such marriages.
The minister also said that psychological effects are also an important aspect to consider when parents approve marriage for their young girls.
Emotional problems can result in correlation to losing parental care and being deprived from experiencing their full childhood. Such marriage, according to the report, subjects girls to pressure and psychological illness, such as addiction, schizophrenia, hysteria and depression.
Other problems concerning sexual relations between the couple can further cause damage resulting from confusion on the part of the child due to lack of awareness of the true meaning of marriage and the inability to understand family and relationship responsibilities.
“I have had experience in counseling a number of Saudi girls and their families,” said Sultana Parveen, a family counselor and psychologist based in Jeddah. “Most of them I have found to have issues with trust and develop rebellious behavior when put into a situation they have literally no control over.”
Controversy over whether or not an official law putting an end to marriages involving minors to adult spouses should be introduced has become widespread. In the forefront of the push to establish a law clearly establishing a minimum marriage age in the Kingdom has come from the NSHR.
