Some peoples views on marriage are also incompatible with Australian Law:
Australian girls among millions forced to become child brides
AN eloquent and heart-wrenching video message from an 11-year-old girl who escaped being sold into a marriage to an older man has thrown the spotlight on forced marriages.
In her video soliloquy, Yemeni girl Nada Al-Ahdals defiantly declares: "I'm not an item for sale."
Nada says she fled to her uncle's house when her parents attempted to force her into marrying an older man for money.
"I would have had no life, no education," she says in the video, dated July 8. "Don't they have any compassion?"
"I'm better off dead. I'd rather die."
While mainly a third world problem, Australia is not immune to teenage and prepubescent girls being forced into marrying older men.
Among the shocking statistics are:
* 37,000 girls under 18 are forced into marriage every day
* 13 million underage girls married off each year
* Girls under 15 five times more likely to die in childbirth
* Most are in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East
* Australian girls have fought back afainst forced marriage
Taken against their will
11 year-old Nada al-Ahdal from Yemen tells her story of escaping from a forced marriage, and wants to stop the same thing happening to other children. Courtesy Memri TV
In May 2010, a 14-year-old girl in Victoria was banned from leaving Australia and her parents forced to surrender her passport to save her from an arranged marriage.
The girl had old her teacher that she wouldn't be attending classes anymore because she was due to travel overseas to be married. She was just 13. According to court documents, the girl's teacher contacted Victoria's Department of Human Services, which sent two officers to the girl's home while her parents were at work.
The girl let them in, telling the workers that "she was not attending school because her father had said that he did not like her going to school" and because she was "engaged to be married and was planning to travel overseas in two or three weeks' time in order to meet her fiance ... she had only seen a photograph of this man".
When asked how she felt about getting married, the child said she "did not know what to say as she had not met her fiance". When asked if she understood whether she was expected to have sex, she indicated that she did not know what that really meant.
