“I made it possible for my father to buy new wives”

She escaped from her husband. Ran to court. Got a divorce. All at the age of 10. Publishing her memoirs, Nujood Ali from Yemen began to break down barriers. Five years on, we visit Nujood to see how she is getting on. Her life, it seems, has only gone from really bad to less bad.

BY RNW correspondent Judith Spiegel, in the Yemeni capital Sana'a

The house I enter is dark and small. I am in Al Hasabah, an area of Sana’a where heavy fighting took place between government troops and tribesmen in the spring of 2011. On the bare concrete floor are some dirty mattresses and a jerry can with water. A wire without a light bulb hangs from the ceiling. The only decoration in the four square meter room is a poster of a car and one with Quranic verses.

I am confused. I was supposed to meet a girl rich by Yemeni standards. In the media Nujood was portrayed as a happy middle class girl, going to a private school, wanting to become a lawyer. My thoughts are interrupted when Nujood steps out of the darkness, wearing her best dress. 

Fled the fighting“I do not go to school anymore, maybe next year,” Nujood says with an apologetic look. “We had to flee during the war and ever since I didn’t go back to school. I do not live in my own house anymore, because my father lives there. He used to beat me, I cannot live with him.” His third wife kicked her out of the house that Nujood actually owns. It was bought for her with the help of the publisher of her book. 

Nujood’s book did well. But she is not the one who has benefited. Nujood explains: “My father gets a monthly salary, I think it comes from the publisher, but I am not sure. He gives me only 50 dollars a month, sometimes I get nothing.” Suddenly she realises: “I made it possible for him to buy new wives.” 

No new lawA law to impose a minimum age for marriages, for both girls and boys, never made it through the Yemeni parliament. Religious scholars and other arties intervened to prevent it. Fathers in Yemen can still marry their daughters off as young as eight or nine. 

Bad advertising
The Yemeni authorities have twice denied Nujood permission to travel. Both times she had been invited abroad to receive an award. But the government clearly feels the story of a nine-year old child bride is one better not told to the world. More bad advertising for a country that still ranks at the bottom of the list when it comes to gender equality.

Nujood is not angry, for her this is life. She used to dream of becoming a lawyer, of travelling, of getting scholarships. It did not happen. But Nujood tries to see things positively: “After the book we had a house and food.” Nujood gives me one of her sweet smiles again. She touches my hand, shows me her black nail polish and wants to be in a photo.

Never everThe 13 or 14 year old (Nujood is not sure), is no longer married to a much older man who raped and beat her. She still hopes to go back to school, but does not seem very sure she will. And how about marriage, will she ever get married again? “Never ever ever ever!” 

The publisher has not responded to a request for information about why the book revenues are not paid directly to Nujood and whether anyone is monitoring the situation. Source

Why stoning is not a part of Islamic Law

Violence Against Afghan Women "More Extreme"

Following a spate of particularly brutal murders, Afghanistan’s minister for women has said attacks on women are becoming more extreme in nature.

This week, two men were arrested in the northern Kunduz province for beheading a 14-year-old girl, apparently because one of them had his marriage proposal turned down. The case came a month after the beheading of a 25-year-old woman in the western Herat province, and the mutilation and murder of a 30-year-old in the same province earlier in October.

Speaking on November 25, at an event to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Afghan women’s affairs minister Husn Banu Ghazanfar said a higher incidence of “extreme or brutal violence” had been recorded in recent months.

At the same time, Ghazanfar said the 3,600 cases of all kinds of violence against women recorded between April and July represented a fall on the same period in 2011.

"We have recorded some very tragic cases this year, though the numbers are lower than last year,” she said. “We are concerned.”

Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, AIHRC, disagrees that the total numbers are down. Commission member Soraya Sobhrang has told the media that her institution recorded 4,000 incidents in April-October, 1,000 more than in the same period last year.

Violence against women often relates to matters of “honour” – perceived offences against a family’s reputation, often arising out of baseless rumour.

Kamela, a young woman from the eastern Nangarhar province, is now trapped in a marriage to a man about five times older than her, after suffering a cycle of violence.

When she was just 14, her father married her off to a 35-year-old man. On their wedding night, the husband discovered she had suffered sexual abuse from a cousin two months before – she had never said anything before because the man had threatened to kill her. Kamala’s husband beat and kicked her until she passed out, and sent her back home on the grounds that she was “immoral”.

Because father felt his honour impugned, he too beat her to a point where the family thought she was dead. Then she was confined in a barn with the livestock for four months until her husband divorced her.

After that, her father accepted 30,000 US dollars from a 78-year-old man who agreed to marry her.

"People are usually aggrieved with other people, but I am aggrieved at God. It would have been better if He hadn’t created me in the first place if I was fated to live with so much suffering,” she said. "Is there anything other than death that can help me?”

In theory, the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law, passed in 2009, should offer Kamela protection and redress. It covers the various things that have happened to her, outlawing a range of abuses from assault and rape to marriages that are coercive, involve minors or amount to a transaction between the families concerned.

Ghazanfar says translating this legislation into practice needs coordination between all government agencies, not just the women’s affairs ministry.

"There’s a long way to go to implement the law,” she conceded.

Qodsia Niazi, who heads the prosecution service department that deals with violence against women, says obstacles to making the law work include traditional values and attitudes, the general security situation, the impunity of the rich and powerful, and a shortage of female staff in Afghanistan’s legal and judicial institutions.

However, Niazi said, some prosecutions have been successful.

"We have dealt with 1,320 cases of violence against women since last year [ending March 2012], mostly concerning assault, harassment, coercion to prostitution, sexual abuse and mutilation," she said.

She argues that fair, well-publicised trials will serve an exemplary purpose.

"People have welcomed two public trials, one a case where a father sexually abused his daughter, and the other involving a man who assaulted and mutilated his wife before imprisoning her in a toilet for six months,” she said. “Such trials are very effective in reducing violence against women."

Others are less upbeat about the prospects for change.

"Has anyone who murdered a woman ever been executed?” asked Samira, a university student in the capital Kabul. “That makes it obvious that the government has no intention of protecting women’s rights. Nor can these so-called institutions do anything, either."

Samira says years of talking about rights for women, and the proliferation of institutions dedicated to this aim, have resulted in very little.

"For the whole of a decade, the so-called women’s rights defence institutions have pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Women’s rights have become lucrative,” she said, “Yet rights for women have not been assured, and the violence has gone up rather than down. All these conferences and slogans are purely symbolic. Everyone has started up an NGO in the name of women and is making money."

One of the arguments often made in the campaign against violence is that many Afghans mistakenly conflate local ultra-conservative traditions with Islam.

Daiulhaq, the deputy minister for the Hajj and religious affairs, says his institution is working hard to dispel such perceptions, with new departments focusing on gender issues and on Islamic teachings on women’s rights. In addition, he said, mosque prayer leaders were being asked to devote part of their weekly sermons to women’s rights and the evils of violence against them.

Despite this, Parwin Rahimi, head of the AIHRC’s women’s rights support and development department, accuses the religious affairs ministry of shirking its responsibilities.

“I am sure religious scholars do not ignore the truth, but certain people whose own interests could be at risk are blocking cooperation," she said.

Specifically, she said, the ministry had raised objections to the law on eradicating violence against women on the grounds that it conflicted with Islamic precepts.

Keramatullah Sediqi, director of Islamic research at the ministry, said the anti-violence legislation had deficiencies that needed to be addressed, such as the penalties which courts could impose, and the need for the law to set out “penalties if a woman commits violence against men".

Source

The horror of female genital mutilation

"After the pain, it was the screaming that I'll never forget. It wasn't just mine and my sister's screams, there were so many other girls there - all being cut. I've never heard screams like that again and I don't think I ever will."
Aissa, from Mali, West Africa was just six years old when she and her one year-old sister were told: "We have to go somewhere". The sisters were taken on a journey by the female members of their family, oblivious to the torturous destination that was waiting for them. Aissa and her sister were then forced to endure a depraved ritual, scarring them for perpetuity: female genital mutilation.

I ask Aissa, now 29 and living and working as a midwife in London, what she can remember of that day when she and her little sister arrived at the place they were taken to by their step mother. "Isn't it ironic?" says Aissa, "That I can remember everything so clearly, like it happened yesterday, but that is only because the memories of the blood, the pain, the screaming will always haunt me, like a re-occurring bad dream".

Aissa describes how her sister was taken away by a woman to "wait for her turn" while Aissa's stepmother instructed her to lay down on a bed. Aissa did as she was told, as four women stood over her pinning her to the bed as another woman began to cut her. No anaesthetic was used to remove Aissa's clitoris with a razor blade. Aissa explains that it doesn't matter how tightly you are held down, your body instinctively convulses, which results in deeper and longer incisions.

"The pain is, well, it's so difficult to describe to you what it is like. Imagine when you cut your finger, it's a million times worse than that. But that doesn't even begin to describe the type of pain that takes over when the part of your body that has the most nerve endings in it is cut away. Only girls who have been cut will ever know what that level of pain is like. I honestly thought I was going to die, and then everything went black."

Aissa then tells me there is another reason why she will never ever forget that day. Almost whispering, she says: "It was the first time I had ever slept in a real bed; we had always slept on the floor before. I can't remember how long I stayed in the bed, maybe one or two weeks until I was able to walk again."

As you read this, vulnerable young girls (children in the majority of cases) across the world are being led to a place by their mothers, stepmothers, aunts and grandmothers where they will be subjected to physical and emotional pain like no other. That physical and emotional pain inflicted on them, on so many levels, will be and will stay at such an intensity, there are just no appropriate words to attempt to describe the young girls' ordeals. To listen to another woman reflect back to the time she was betrayed by those whom she loved and trusted the most, through the most invasive, barbaric and brutal treachery, is only comparable to torture so extreme it just can't be real, except it is.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also referred to as Female Genital Cutting (FGC), is recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. The World Health Organisation says FGM also violates a person's rights to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death. The United Nations, Amnesty International and UNICEF are just three of many organisations across the world working tirelessly to 'consign FGM to history'.

The World Health Organisation has classified FGM into four types:

1.Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris, and in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).

2.Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia (lips) minora, with or without excision of the labia majora. 

3.Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris. (The seal is then cut open and stitched up again to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth; hence the woman goes through repeated opening and closing procedures, increasing immediate and long-term risks.)

4.Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes

Latest figures show around 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. The latest statistical exploration from UNICEF states it is most common in western, eastern, and north-eastern regions of Africa. It is also prevalent in many countries in South-East Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. Despite it being illegal in Canada, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, France, Sweden, Switzerland, the US, Kenya, Egypt and the UK, Female Genital Mutilation is still widely practiced.

An utterly useless UK government

The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, introduced to close the loophole of the Prohibition of FemaleCircumcision Act 1985 (which permitted parents to take their daughters out of the UK to undergo FGM abroad before bringing them back) does not scare or stop those intent on mutilating our future generations. This act tragically fails to uphold the UK's zero tolerance to FGM. There has not been one single prosecution of FGM in the UK, despite thisabhorrent crime being outlawed in 1985.

Like any illegal practice, thriving ferociously deep and dark underground, it is impossible to be precise regarding the number of girls in the UK who have suffered and are currently suffering at the hands of this brutal and barbaric ritual. The UK charity FORWARD estimates from their research that 66,000 girls in the UK have been mutilated, while 24,000 girls under 16 are at risk from the most severe form of FGM in England and Wales. One would assume then, faced with this alarming calculation, that the British government would swiftly take action and act as a matter of uttermost urgency. That sadly though is just an idealistic aspiration of what should be happening. Our government, whose duty it is to protect its citizens, have adopted what can only be described politely as a pitiful and pathetic 'attempt' to safeguard and protect the thousands of children at risk in the UK. Utterly useless bureaucrats are depriving vital funding, resources, information, care and support to those desperately gasping for it.

If you search FGM on the Home Office website, the search results give little comfort or re-assurance to  its victims, merely  facts, figures and three telephone numbers. The Home Office re-directs most of the responsibility for the charity FORWARD to deal with. On the Department of Health's website there are just seven search results for this ignored and neglected crime - none of which have been updated for over a year. The Home Office and the DofH refused to put anyone forward for interview to answer my questions on what exactly the British government's approach is in dealing with the illegally practiced and prevalent FGM in the UK. They also refused to provide details on what measures have been and are being put in place to safeguard and protect the victims, how the illegal underground networks plan to be broken and how much funding has and is being allocated to fight FGM in the UK.

Quite why no minister is able to speak out to re-assure British citizens that the government are doing everything in their power to tackle the illegal practice of FGM in the UK is just mystifying. A standard statement  was sent from both departments to attempt to provide a response. From the Home Office, Minister for Equalities and Overseas Champion for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, Lynne Featherstone says: "Female Genital Mutilation is an abhorrent crime and we are very clear that those found to practice it should feel the full force of the law. As a government, we are also working with UK and international agencies on the ground to help prevent women and girls being subjected to this practice." 

From the Department of Health, a spokesperson says: "We have written to the Royal Colleges of Midwives and Obstetricians and Gynaecologists about making sure we are doing everything possible together to eliminate this abusive and abhorrent practice and protect future generations of girls and women from harm. The current professional guidance highlights that NHS professionals have a clear duty of child protection if a doctor is approached to perform a mutilating procedure or if it becomes known to them that a child is to be taken abroad for that purpose." Neither the Home Office nor the DofH provided details about the type of work they say is happening to protect future generations of girls and women in the UK from harm.

Saria Khalifa, the Youth Programme Officer for FORWARD, tells me the charity is extremely concerned about the British Government's patchy approach to tackling FGM, which is failing to safeguard all children at risk of FGM who reside in the UK. She says: "The UK government has a duty to develop effective primary prevention measures particularly in London where FGM has become a growing concern. Additionally there is need for protection strategies that offer safety nets and specialist support to women and girls. There is no national action plan on FGM nor a strategy in place to engage key communities and key opinion makers on ending FGM. More importantly, the Government funding cuts which have hit the women's sector very deepy, coupled with lack of a comprehensive strategy is making our work even more difficult and a greater struggle."

The poisonous power of patriarchy 

Female Genital Mutilation is without a doubt powered by the poison of patriarchy. In a FGM affected community, there is a fundamental belief that mutilation is the only way to initiate a girl into becoming a "good woman" ready for marriage and childbirth. The bitter irony is that the very process of FGM is achieving the exact opposite. Removing part of a girl or a woman's anatomy, disturbing and forcefully changing the way her body is intended to function not only takes away her femininity, but biologically changes the composition that makes her into the woman that she naturally is intended to be. Women across the world are torturing other women to accommodate and appease an ideology and disorted history of male supremacy. FGM is practiced to satisfy the wishes of a patriarchal family structure, but in reality the men distance themselves from the procedure of the practice, maintaining a dominating presence in the "background" and are not concerned enough with the consequences to stop inflicting this depravity onto their daughters.

Despite the "cultural justification" that FGM "turns a girl into a woman" there is also the assumption that when she does become a "good woman" she needs to be appropriately controlled and oppressed. It is widely believed that removing parts of her genitalia reduces her libido and in turn makes her less sexually demanding, supressing the level of pleasure she is "allowed" to receive and sustain. It is not uncommon in some cases for a woman's vulva to be stitched up, leaving just a small opening for urine and menstrual blood to pass through, before the woman is then re-opened for sexual intercourse and childbirth. 

Aissa says it is not only the damaging physical effects that victims are forced to endure for the rest of their lives:"I still need to work on myself psychologically because of all the feelings of self-loathing I have towards my body. I am different and I look different - for a very long time I didn't even feel like a woman. It was impossible to have sex, the pain was horrific and I have suffered with lots of urinary infections. Still now I find it so difficult to have any medical appointments, which is part of the reason why I wanted to become a midwife to help others who are like me."

There are no cultural or religious justifications ever for mutilating another woman's body. There is no endorsement of FGM in the Bible, the Tanakh or Quran. Charity Forward has published a research on FGM and Islam as many Muslim (as well as non-Muslim) communities tend to associate FGM with Islam. "Words like 'sunna' and 'tahur' used for FGM by Muslims erroneously endorse the link of Islam to FGM and brings the great religion into disrepute. All religions say God created human beings in the best forms and wanted them to keep the nature in which they were created. It is forbidden to make changes in God's creation unless there is a compelling reason ie for medical reasons."

Aissa recently returned to Mali to take the brave step of explaining to her father how the life she dreamt of living was cruelly snatched from her through the destructive and devastating consequences of the Female Genital Mutilation she endured. She tells me she wanted to make the visit to protect future generations of her family - to make sure they never ever have to suffer like she has. After many difficult and emotional discussions with her father, he has now promised Aissa that no other girls in her family will ever be mutilated again.

"And do you believe your father's promise?" I ask. 

 Aissa pauses, then responds slowly: "Yes I do, what other choice do I have, but to have faith in those whom I love and trust the most"?

source

Mother of Morocco suicide victim speaks out

Morocco: Escape for 16-year-old Amina Filali from her marriage came in the form of a pill of rat poison she bought in the market for 60 cents.
Pressured by a conservative rural Moroccan society, a judge and her own mother to marry the man she said had raped her at 15 and then abused her for the rest of her marriage, she could only see one way out: Suicide.

"I had to marry her to him, because I couldn't allow my daughter to have no future and stay unmarried," said her mother Zohra in an interview with The Associated Press in their tiny village in northern Morocco, a week after her daughter killed herself.
The Justice Ministry suggests Filali was consenting and not a victim. But her death has called attention to - and prompted outrage over - an article in the penal code absolving the perpetrator of the rape of a minor if he marries the victim.

Activists and social workers are calling for its repeal. On Saturday in front of parliament in the capital Rabat, some 300 people waved signs and chanted slogans calling for a revised penal code that specifically outlaws violence against women.
Zohra Filali said she found her daughter being attacked in the forest after hearing she had been waylaid by a man with a knife. She immediately took her daughter to the family home of the man, who was 10 years older, and demanded they marry.
In many conservative societies, a family's honour rests with the women and intercourse outside of wedlock brings a deep shame that can only be remedied with the girl's marriage.

The practice dates back to the Old Testament and takes place in conservative or tribal parts in the Muslim world, such as Afghanistan.
In the story told by Amina's parents, it becomes clear that the mother was the primary force behind her daughter's marriage, which was then sanctioned by a judge and the law which permits underage marriages to "resolve" rape cases.
Morocco updated its family code in 2004 in a landmark improvement of the situation of women, but activists say there's still room for improvement. In cases of rape, the burden of proof is often on the victim and if she can't prove she was attacked, a woman risks being prosecuted for debauchery.
The French version of Article 475 of the 1962 penal code says that the "kidnapper" - a term that can refer to an attacker or rapist - of a minor cannot be prosecuted if he marries his victim.

The Arabic version refers to the one who "kidnaps or deceives" a minor. Whatever the wording, the article is cited in justifying the minor's marriage.
An online petition calling for a change to the law has garnered about 3,500 signatures and a protest was held on Thursday in front of the courthouse of the nearby town of Larache.

After at first remaining silent about the case, the Justice Ministry issued a statement Friday saying the judge acted correctly and followed the law in accordance with the wishes of both families and the victim.
"The victim had relations with the man who (later) married her during which she lost her virginity with her consent," said the statement, which did not address concerns about the nature of consent between a 15 and a 25-year-old.
The parents, poor farmers in Morocco's fertile coastal region, maintain Amina was raped. The Associated Press generally doesn't generally identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but in this case her family agreed that she could be identified.
Amina's husband and his family could not be reached for comment on what happened to her. When the family of the man at first refused to marry Amina, her mother took her to a doctor to get a medical certificate saying she had been raped.
The doctor informed Zohra that her daughter had lost her virginity earlier and did not confirm that a rape had occurred. "She finally told me that he had first raped her more than a month ago," the mother said.

Regardless of how it happened, said her mother, a small woman in a light blue headscarf who kept her eyes downcast until the subject of the family honour came up, her daughter had to marry or her life would be over.
"We would be the laughingstock of our neighbors," she said, with a rising voice, her eyes flashing fiercely. The societal pressures on young women are fierce in rural Morocco, where an estimated two-thirds of women are illiterate.
In this village alone, four young women have attempted suicide, according to the local chapter of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. Two were successful, including an unwed pregnant teenager who also took rat poison.
"Women are the first victims of people's social and economic situation," said Fathiya Al Yaakoubi of the AMDH, as the human rights group is known by its French initials.

"Poverty pushes families to marry off their underage girls." She also holds the state responsible for allowing these underage marriages to take place, despite an official minimum age of 18.
Amina's father, Lahcen, was finally informed of the attack on his daughter and he went first to the nearby town of Larache and then north to the port city of Tangiers seeking justice.
There he said the prosecutor pushed them to marry his daughter to the man, whose family had finally agreed to the match, in the face of his imminent prosecution.
"I was against the marriage from the beginning, but when the state wanted to marry them, what could I do against the will of the state," said Lahcen, who has six other children ages ranging from 5 to 23.

He said at first he refused to do the paperwork, but said his wife pushed for it to be completed. "The law allowing judges the authority to allow marriage in the case of rape has to be canceled," said Al Yaakoubi, the activist.
"Marriage is not the solution for a rape, which is a crime that should be punished."
According to the mother, the forced marriage did not go well, as neither the groom nor his family, also quite poor, welcomed the new addition. Amina lived with her unemployed husband in a small shack next to his family's home and was reportedly beaten regularly by him and his mother.
"She came home a lot because she was scared and she said they hit her," said Zohra Filali about her daughter, her composure cracking as she told the story. "I didn't tell my husband because I was hoping it would improve."
It didn't and on March 10, three and a half months after a judge authorised the marriage, Amina poisoned herself. She lingered in the hospital for several hours and the last time her mother saw her was through a glass window when she said she was feeling better and asked for a yogurt.

Three hours later she was dead. Amina is buried on a simple hilltop cemetery of white tombstones. Her grave is marked by a cairn of stones covered with palm fronds with a view of the beautiful rolling hills and nearby forest.
On Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, her family recited the opening verse of the Quran over her grave, breaking into tears. "I thought she would have no future, no marriage, but now it would have been better if she had just stayed home," her mother said.
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Facts You Need To Know About Islamic Sharia and Muslims