Yemen is a country in crisis. After more than two years of war, its infrastructure has been badly damaged and its people impoverished, with hundreds of thousands sickened with cholera, The New York Times reported.

But hidden among the numbing statistics of death and destruction is another insidious scourge: Desperate families are increasingly selling their daughters off as child brides or letting their boys be recruited as child soldiers, the paper added .

“It is impossible to say how many kids are being pulled out of school now to be married off or sent to fight, but we know that more and more parents are doing this,” said Meritxell Relano, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Yemen. “The lack of livelihood and unemployment is forcing them to do this.”

The Yemeni law does not set a legal age for marriage, nor does it criminalize marital rape.

In 2014, Yemen has been entangled in civil war when Houthis and supporters of toppled president Ali Abdullah Saleh attempted a coup against the internationally-recognized Yemeni government of Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi.

Source : Mena