Nujood Ali

Nujood Ali (نجود علي) (born 1998) is a central figure in Yemen's movement against forced marriage and child marriage. At the age of ten, she obtained a divorce, breaking with the tribal tradition. In November 2008, U.S. women's magazine Glamour designated Nujood Ali and her lawyer Shada Nasser as Women of the Year. Ali's courage was praised by prominent women including Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.

Ali's lawyer Shada Nasser, born in 1964, is a feminist and specialist in human rights, whose involvement in Ali's case received much acclaim. Ali has also written a book together with French journalist Delphine Minoui called: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.

Nujood Ali was nine when her parents arranged a marriage to Faez Ali Thamer, a man in his thirties. Regularly beaten by her in-laws and raped by her husband, Ali escaped on April 2, 2008, two months after the wedding. On the advice of her father's second wife, she went directly to court to seek a divorce. After waiting for half a day, she was noticed by a judge, Mohammed al-għadha, who took it upon himself to give her temporary refuge, and had both her father and husband taken into custody.

Shada Nasser agreed to defend Ali. For the lawyer, it was the continuation of a struggle begun with the installation of her practice in Sana'a, which she opened in the 1990s as the first Yemeni law office headed by a woman. She built her clientele by offering services to female prisoners.

Yemeni law allows girls of any age to wed, but it forbids sex with them until an indefinite time when they are considered "suitable for sexual intercourse." In court, Nasser argued that Ali’s marriage violated the law, since she was raped. Ali rejected the judge's proposal of resuming living with her husband after a break of three to five years. On April 15, 2008, the court granted her a divorce.

After the trial, Ali rejoined her family in a suburb of Sana'a. She returned to school in the fall of 2008 with plans to become a lawyer. Ali's memoirs were published in 2009, and royalties from international sales of the book were intended to pay for her schooling; but she did not attend school regularly. Because of negative world press coverage about Yemen resulting from the case, Ali's passport was confiscated in March 2009 and she was prevented from attending the ceremonies for the Women's World Award in Vienna, Austria. Media reports also questioned whether proceeds from the book were in fact coming to the family.

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