Forced Marriage

Interview: These Yezidi Girls Escaped ISIS. Now what?

By Amy Braunschweiger

Last August, the world watched in horror as the extremist armed group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, attacked Iraq’s Yezidi community. Thousands fled without food or water into the nearby Sinjar mountains, but ISIS fighters waylaid many, executing men and abducting thousands of people, mainly women and children. Rumors of forced marriage and enslavement of Yezidi girls and women swirled, and were later confirmed as a trickle of women and girls – now numbering into the hundreds – escaped. Human Rights Watch researchers Samer Muscati andRothna Begum interviewed 20 of these women and girls and shared their findings with Amy Braunschweiger.

Against their will: Inside Canada’s forced marriages

Forced marriage is one of the last taboos to break. A new law could make it a crime. So why do those who champion prevention oppose it?

Tougher Action Urged on Kazakstan "Bride-Theft"

Lawmaker says tougher methods needed to deal with “traditional” abductions.

By Gaziza Baituova - Central Asia

RCA Issue 726,

20 Feb 14 - A proposal to toughen legislation on the practice of “bride stealing” in Kazakstan has reignited debate on a practice that has proved difficult to tackle. Svetlana Romanovskaya, a member of parliament from the ruling Nur Otan party, wants to see stricter measures to criminalise abductions that lead to forced marriages.

In a typical case, a woman is grabbed off the street by male relatives of the would-be groom – who might be a complete stranger – taken by force to his home, and held there against her will until she agrees to marry him. Fear of being shamed will often lead her own family to come to terms with the forced marriage.

Pakistani laws prohibiting underage marriage un-Islamic: CII

ISLAMABAD: The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) concluded its 191th meeting, here Tuesday with the ruling that the laws related to minimum age of marriage were un-Islamic and that children of any age could get married if they attain puberty.

Child, Early and Forced Marriage: A Multi-Country Study.

In 2012, a two-part study on the state of forced marriage was undertaken by Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) for its program on culturally-justified violence against women, supported by the Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratisation (WELDD) consortium. This report is the documentation of that study and was subsequently revised as WLUML’s submission to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for its report on preventing and eliminating child, early and forced marriage.

"العرب يبحثون عن عذارى في مخيم الزعتري "بعت أختي بـ 300 دولار

مخيم الزعتري، الأردن, نوفمبر (آي بي إس) - بلغت أماني 22 من العمر للتو.

وكانت قد فرت قبل شهرين من الحرب الأهلية في سوريا تاركة منزلها في العاصمة دمشق. وبعد رحلة خطيرة استغرقت الليل بأكمله وصلت أماني إلى الزعتري، حيث يوجد مخيم للاجئين بمنطقة الحدود في الأردن، وحيث يعيش والداها واثنان من أخواتها منذ أكثر من سنة.

في دمشق، كانت تعيش مع زوجها وخمسة أطفال في شقة وسط المدينة القديمة. وكالعديد من الفتيات السوريات، تزوجت أماني عندما كانت لا تزال طفلة، فقد وجدث فتي أحلامها في سن 15 عاماً فتزوجته

Niger: Child Marriage on Rise Due to Hunger

Each day before the reaping, the 11-year-old girl walked between the stunted stalks of millet with a sense of mounting dread. In a normal year, the green shoots vaulted out of the ground and rose as high as 13 feet (4 meters), a wall tall enough to conceal an adult man. This time, they only reached her waist. Even the tallest plant in her family's plot barely grazed her shoulder. Zali could feel the tug of the invisible thread tying her fate to that of the land. As the world closed in around her, she knew that this time the bad harvest would mean more than just hunger.

Swaziland: Child marriages banned

The practice of men marrying underage girls - which has been an accepted social norm for centuries but has been linked in recent years to the spread of HIV - was recently declared illegal in Swaziland.

Afghanistan: Trading Women

Hajji Rais Khan, a white bearded resident of Nangarhar’s Dur Baba district, needed only to remove his false teeth and hand over 3,000 dollars to conclude the swift purchase of a young woman for his bride.