Missing 8-year-old daughter forced to marry a strange man...Watch online videos and find them
Apr 02, 2025
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According to the BBC and other foreign media, an 8-year-old girl A, who lived in Bosasso, the autonomous administrative district of Puntland, Somalia, suddenly disappeared in September last year.
It was lost while a relative was taking the girl to see another family.
Parents and police searched for the girl's whereabouts for months but could not be known.
While it was considered a mysterious disappearance case, the investigation took off as a video of A reciting the Koran was recently posted online.
Police and family raided a house in Carmo district hundreds of kilometers away, where their daughter and an adult man named Sheikh Mahmood were together. He found his daughter six months after she disappeared.
Shockingly, Mahmoud claimed to be A's husband.
At first, he explained that he had only taught the girl the Quran, but he said he married the girl while he was arrested and questioned. It also justified the Islamic teachings, referring to religious traditions, arguing that they allowed early marriage.
The girl went back into her family's arms and as the news broke, a dispute erupted over an early marriage in Somalia.
Protests also took place in Mogadishu, the capital.
Early marriages are still prevalent in Somalia.
According to a report released in 2020 by the United Nations Population Fund and the Somali government, 35 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 24 in Somalia were married before the age of 18. In 2017, this figure reached 45 percent.
To address the issue, Somalia's Ministry of Women's Rights submitted a draft 2023 bill to Congress, but it failed to pass due to opposition from some lawmakers. The bill is expected to be reissued.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
