A teenage girl in Azerbaijan who married off at the age of 15 has died while giving birth at age 17.

Shabinur Isayeva passed away at the Kurdamir District Central Hospital on 5 November after undergoing a caesarean section. Doctors managed to save the life of her child, though their condition remains unsatisfactory.

Following public outcry, the Prosecutor’s Office announced that they had opened a criminal investigation for manslaughter.

The investigation was announced after Kamala Aghazade, the chair of the Azerbaijani children’s rights group, Azerbaijan Children, posted on Facebook about the incident. 

According to Aghazade, Isayeva was sent as a bride to the neighbouring village of Sighili, in Kurdemir.

Aghazade said that the girl’s parents and the man who married her, who she said was older than Isayeva, were responsible for her death.

‘The father and mother who married off a seventeen-year-old girl at the age of fifteen, the dishonourable mother who married her, and the mother-in-law who made her her daughter-in-law killed Shabinur’, Aghazade said.

Aghazade also blamed the Kurdamir District Executive Authority and other government institutions for failing to tackle early marriage.

According to her, Isayeva’s family blamed the doctors for her death.