A Tiny Girl With A Brave Heart And A Bold Proclamation
Michelle Miller is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.
After hearing of her accomplishments, I couldn’t believe how tiny the shy little girl appeared. Not even five feet tall, here was a formidable heroine in her native Yemen, a child whose bold proclamation gave power to women across the world.
I met her outside of Dylan’s Candy Store in New York City’s Upper East Side. It was before she accepted her Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year Award under the glare of the bright lights of Carnegie Hall. She hid quietly under the comforting posture of her lawyer, Shada Nassar, and the interpreter assigned to her for the day. But here was a girl who was strong beyond measure.
Nujood Ali was married at the age of nine to a man three times her age. It’s not an uncommon practice. Roughly half of Yemeni girls are married before 18, some as young as 8 years old. But it’s unusual and unlawful for those marriages to be consummated before the bride turns 15. But in Nujood’s case, her husband didn’t wait. And after enduring several weeks of abuse, Nujood one morning boarded a bus to head off to court in the city of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. There she would wait for a judge to notice her. And there she would tell him, "I want a divorce."
He took her home to shelter her from her family, and then introduced her to Shada Nassar, one of a handful of female lawyers who is a staunch women’s rights advocate. Based on her husband’s own admission that he had slept with her, Nujood was granted a divorce. Since then, she’s inspired ...
(AP)
I met her outside of Dylan’s Candy Store in New York City’s Upper East Side. It was before she accepted her Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year Award under the glare of the bright lights of Carnegie Hall. She hid quietly under the comforting posture of her lawyer, Shada Nassar, and the interpreter assigned to her for the day. But here was a girl who was strong beyond measure.
Nujood Ali was married at the age of nine to a man three times her age. It’s not an uncommon practice. Roughly half of Yemeni girls are married before 18, some as young as 8 years old. But it’s unusual and unlawful for those marriages to be consummated before the bride turns 15. But in Nujood’s case, her husband didn’t wait. And after enduring several weeks of abuse, Nujood one morning boarded a bus to head off to court in the city of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. There she would wait for a judge to notice her. And there she would tell him, "I want a divorce."
He took her home to shelter her from her family, and then introduced her to Shada Nassar, one of a handful of female lawyers who is a staunch women’s rights advocate. Based on her husband’s own admission that he had slept with her, Nujood was granted a divorce. Since then, she’s inspired ...
