The issue of Yemeni child brides hit the headlines in 2008 when a bold 10-year-old, Nujood Ali, who was beaten and raped by her husband only weeks after being pulled out of school to marry him, escaped by hailing a taxi for the first time in her life and went to the central courthouse where she demanded to see a judge. After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.

In February the Yemeni parliament tried to stop this atrocity from happening again by passing legislation that would set the minimum marriage age at 17. The measure has not reached the president because many parliamentarians argued it violates sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age. In the meantime, countless girls have been married off to much older men who in many cases already have more than one wife.

The latest child-bride to make the news is a 12-year-old who died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby.

Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children, a children’s rights group.

"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi during an interview with CNN.

Like more than half of all young Yemeni girls, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year.

While it was not immediately known why Fawziya's parents married her off, the reasons vary. Sometimes, financially-strapped parents offer up their daughters for hefty dowries. Marriage means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. And often, parents will extract a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.

Yemen is not alone in this tendency toward early wedlock. Globally, the number of child brides is hard to tabulate; they live mostly in places where births, deaths and the human milestones in between go unrecorded. But there are estimates: About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday, according to analyses done by the Population Council, an international research group. In areas of India, the proportion is as high as 36% and the Amhara region of Ethiopia, the rate approaches 50%.

Tens of millions of girls are having babies before their bodies are mature enough, increasing the likelihood of death from hemorrhaging, obstructed labor and other complications. That's exactly what happened to Fawziya Ammodi.

Want to do something? You can! Find out more about the plight of women and girls across the world and share your knowledge! The first step to change is information!