Divorce, Yemeni style

The little girl in the photograph below has just been divorced. She is eight years old. "I am happy that I am divorced now," she says. "I will be able to go back to school."

This was marriage Yemeni style. This is where Nojud Mohammed Ali lives, and where her unemployed father forced her into a marriage this year, saying he feared she might be kidnapped if she remained single. A court granted the divorce this week, and the ex-"husband", 28-year-old Faez Ali Thameur, said in response to a question from the judge that the "marriage was consummated, but I did not beat her".

Oh, well that's all right, then.

Nojud was in her primary school's second grade when this marriage took place – with her consent, according to her father, Mohammad Ali Al-Ahdal.

"They asked me to sign the marriage contract and remain in my father's house until I was eighteen," says Nojud. "But a week after signing, my father and my mother forced me to go live with him."

Wisely, Nojud is now going to live with her maternal uncle rather than remain with her father.