Nujood Ali

Biography Nujood Ali was nine when her parents arranged a marriage to Faez Ali Thamer, a man in his thirties. Regularly beaten by her in-laws and raped by her husband, Ali escaped on April 2, 2008, two months after the wedding. On the advice of her uncle's second wife, she went directly to the Yemeni court, alone, to seek a divorce. After waiting for half a day, she was noticed by a judge, Mohammed al-Għadha, who took it upon himself to give her temporary refuge, and had both her father and husband taken into custody.

Shada Nasser agreed to defend Ali free of charge. For the lawyer, it was the continuation of a struggle that had begun with the opening of her practice in Sana'a in the 1990s as the first Yemeni law office headed by a woman. She built her clientele by offering services to female prisoners. the court granted her a divorce (and 250 dollars of compensation to her now former husband which he had given at the time of marriage for breaking the contract). Ali's memoirs, ghostwritten by Delphine Minoui, were published in 2009, and royalties from international sales of the book were intended to pay for her schooling; but she did not attend school regularly. Because of negative world press coverage about Yemen resulting from the case, Ali's passport was confiscated in March 2009, and she was prevented from attending the ceremonies for the Women's World Award in Vienna, Austria. Media reports also questioned whether proceeds from the book were in fact going to the family.

In 2010, Ali's family moved to a new two-story residence bought with the help of her French publisher and running a grocery store on the ground floor of the building. At this time, Ali and her younger sister were attending private school full-time.

The English-language version of the memoir was published in March 2010. Introducing the work, New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof praised the work done to raise awareness regarding such societal problems as terrorism, associated with polygamy and child marriage, saying, "little girls like Nujood may prove more effective than missiles at defeating terrorists." Indeed, publicity surrounding Ali's case is said to have inspired efforts to annul other child marriages, including that of an eight-year-old Saudi girl who was allowed to divorce a middle-aged man in 2009, after her father had forced her to marry him the year before in exchange for about $13,000.

In 2013 Ali reported to the media that her father had forced her out of their home, and has withheld most of the money paid by the publishers. Her father has also arranged a marriage for her younger sister, Haifa.

According to the Huffington Post, she married in 2014 and now has two girls. Her education was not advanced as originally planned. Her family has been said to have pressured her to demand more money.