In the picture, the pretty, seemingly-ordinary Yemeni girl holding a pink scarf called Nujood Ali is not an ordinary girl at all. In spite of her radiant and cheerful expression, she has a scar deep within her - she is 10 and divorced. It might be surprising to some of us, but child marriages are indeed common in Yemen. Yemeni parents try to marry their daughter to middle-aged men in exchange for money.
Child marriages in Yemen involve an extractive institution, in this case the girls' cold-hearted parents, who trade their daughters for money. This extractive institution thrives in Yemen especially because Yemeni judges, who represent the legal system, do not seem to be bothered by the ubiquity of these child marriages to the extent that they even support it, as the article mentioned,"There are plenty of judges who support him and are unsympathetic [to Nujood]."
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