Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A story in the news this week brought home the tragedy of poverty and lack of education ... and the impact on the young and innocent of this world.
A 12-year-old girl in Yemen died in childbirth along with her stillborn child. The young girl, Fawziya Abdulla Yousif - married off to a 24-year-old farmer by her father - died when doctors were unable to stop heavy bleeding incurred during the delivery.
My first instinct when I read the story was that of anger and disgust at what to the vast majority of the world would be described as both paedophilia and statutory rape.
I still feel those things as I write this but after continuing to read the article, I learned that it wasn't quite as cut and dried as all that. It seems that in rural parts of Yemen almost 50 per cent of girls under the age of 15 are married off by families in need of the money that the marriage would bring them.
Added to this, a lack of education on the dangers of such a thing means that parents will keep marrying off their daughters at as young an age as possible and little girls who should still be playing innocently with their friends and enjoying their childhood will be carrying out the duties of a wife instead.
While to many of us the practice of marrying off our daughters at such a young age is too disgusting to comprehend, it's hard to be angry with people that don't know any better. The real blame lies in the hands of the government who have yet to publicise and circulate a law adopted by the Yemeni parliament in February that puts the minimum age for marriage at 17 years of age.
And this is where my anger builds. I can just about understand when it comes to people that aren't educated to know any better but the President himself is highly educated, with at least five children of his own, and I can't help thinking marriage under the age of puberty is not something he would ever have allowed for any daughter he might have had.
He also can't be unaware of the problem as more and more children as young as eight-years-old are now starting to gain divorces from the courts.
Divorced at the age of eight! That's an age where a child is still trying to learn right from wrong and isn't even allowed to stay home alone. It's an age where little girls should still be playing with their Barbie dolls and thinking that boys are 'yukky and gross'.
Children are the future of any country and as such their welfare should be looked after, if not by their parents who don't know any better, then by the government whose absolute responsibility it is to take care of each and everyone of its citizens.
The problem in Yemen only really came to the public's notice a year ago when a 10-year-old girl, Najood Ali, enlisted the help of a human rights lawyer to get her divorce to a man three times her age annulled.
Since then more and more children are turning to the courts for help and as cases are being won, it's impossible to accept that those involved are not beginning to learn that marrying children off that young is wrong.
Najood's case was first brought to light when CNN got a hold of the story but the continuing tragedy is that a year later, when CNN went back to do a follow up story on her, they found out that the publicity surrounding her case had only brought her and her family more harm than good. It's just too frustrating for words!
