An attempt to marry a 13-year-old girl to a 63-year-old man in Naga Hammadi, Qena some
550km south of Cairo, has been aborted by the Child Protection General Unit in Qena, Upper Egypt. The minimum marriage age for women in Egypt is 18.
Samiha Saad, Director of the Child Protection Unit in Qena, said that the sub-unit for child protection in Naga Hammadi received a tip through the Child Helpline that the marriage of the teenage girl to the old man was planned to take place during Eid al-Fitr, the feast that comes at the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. This year, the feast day was on 31 March. Ms Saad said that the tip came a week before Eid al-Fitr. The Eid, the feast that celebrates the end of the is a popular time for holding weddings in rural Egypt.
The prospective groom was the girls teacher in the kuttab, a mosque-attached religious school where children are taught the Qur’an and rudimentary literacy and numeracy. The girl’s father and the groom intended for the marriage to take place according to Sunna Islam.
Officials from the Child Protection Unit met the girl’s father and made him understand that marrying off his underage daughter was against the law. He had to sign a pledge not to let his daughter marry before she is 18, the legal age. They talked to him about the health hazards of child marriage and the legal violation it involves.
Ms Saad made it clear that the family of the girl would be monitored on a weekly basis to ensure that no marriage for her would take place in secret.
