Forced Marriage and Rape: The Legacy of the Khmer Rouge on Trial

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Nina Teggarty

In Cambodia, the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal hears from survivors of forced marriage, but critics say the court should also cover other acts of gender-based violence.

“I just couldn’t understand why falling in love was a crime,” says Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an organization that records atrocities that took place under the Khmer Rouge. From 1975–79, Pol Pot’s brutal regime devastated Cambodia, and an estimated 1.7 million people died from starvation or disease, or were executed.

The Khmer Rouge, known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), controlled every part of people’s lives, even love and sexuality. Chhang was only 15 when he witnessed the Khmer Rouge killing a couple because “they fell in love without permission.” To make sure Cambodians married the “right” people, namely those who were loyal to the party, the CPK forced men and women to marry each other.

Survivors of forced marriage are currently giving testimony in Case 002/02, the latest trial to take place at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, otherwise known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC). Evidence of forced marriage will be used to determine if senior leaders of the regime committed crimes against humanity.

The Khmer Rouge used forced marriage to exact ultimate control over relationships, as couples were expected to procreate and produce the next generation of party adherents. No one knows how many people were forcibly married by “Angkar” (the communist party), but mass wedding ceremonies, some consisting of more than 100 couples, took place across Cambodia.

Survivors appearing before the court have described how the regime pressured them to marry. “I refused [to marry] several times, but finally the sector committee said I was a stubborn person,” Sa Lay Hieng said in court. Scared of being killed, Hieng was coerced into marrying a man she did not like. Another witness, who was granted anonymity, said she was made to marry a Khmer Rouge officer in a collective ceremony; when she refused his advances on their wedding night, her new spouse complained to his commander, who then raped her. “I had to bite my lip and shed my tears, but I didn’t dare to make any noise, because I was afraid I would be killed,” she said. She was eventually led back to her husband.

The final testimonies relating to forced marriage will be heard in the coming weeks. But some experts argue that other heinous sexual crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge era, such as rape outside of forced marriage, have been overlooked by the court.

In a study by the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization, an NGO that provides counseling to victims appearing before the court, a third of female interviewees witnessed rape outside forced marriage. This finding is echoed by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected a “significant number of documents” detailing at least 156 cases of rape by Khmer Rouge comrades in cooperatives and detention centers. “The women who were raped were accused of having served in the CIA, KGB or other enemies of Angkar, and taken to be smashed [killed],” said Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center.

Farina So, an expert in gender-based violence perpetrated by the Communist Party of Kampuchea, says that “hundreds and hundreds” of rapes occurred, adding that cadres “used it as a tool to victimize women, to silence them.” In the course of her research, So has interviewed numerous survivors of sexual assault; one of these women, Tang Kim, was considered “an enemy of Angkar” and in 1976 was rounded up – along with eight other women – and readied for execution in Kampong Chhnang province, central Cambodia. While Kim awaited her fate, she could hear the other women being raped and then murdered – “I was terrified to see people being killed off and buried one by one” – recalls Kim in a film made by the Cambodian Documentation Center. She continues, “I saw a Khmer Rouge soldier slashing a woman’s abdomen; they cut it open and took out the fetus.” After being gang-raped by the soldiers, Kim managed to escape and went into hiding.

According to So, Kim tried to submit her civil party application to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, but it was rejected because prosecutors are addressing only sexual abuse within forced marriage. It was, says So, a decision that “really disappointed” Kim and other rape survivors, many of whom have spent decades summoning up the courage to speak about their ordeal.

When Women & Girls Hub approached the Khmer Rouge tribunal to ask why the current trial is focusing exclusively on forced marriage, the court’s spokesperson, Lars Olsen, said co-investigating judges had concluded that rape outside forced marriage was not an official policy of the Khmer Rouge. He pointed to this statement from the tribunal: “Those who were accused of ‘immoral’ behavior, including rape, were often re-educated or killed [so] it cannot be considered that rape was one of the crimes used by CPK leaders to implement the common purpose.”

The survivors and their lawyers, who campaigned for years to have forced marriage added to the list of crimes prosecuted in court, are waiting for the expected judgment in late 2017.

Carolyn Miles: Without a Gender Equity Shift We Won’t Reach SDGs

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Flora Bagenal

On International Day of the Girl, Save the Children has released a report detailing the five worst parts of the world to be young and female. Carolyn Miles, CEO of the organization, reveals their plans to ensure a brighter future for young girls in the developing world.

One girl under the age of 15 is married every seven seconds, according to a report published today by Save the Children. Based on indicators such as rates of child marriage, teen pregnancy and the likelihood of dropping out of school, the report also outlines the best and worst places in the world to be a girl. Niger sits at the bottom of the list, closely followed by Chad, Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia. The best place in the world to be a girl? Sweden.

The study, released to coincide with the International Day of the Girl, takes a closer look at the impact of early marriage and early pregnancy on the outcomes of girls’ lives, and calls on the international community to do more to ensure girls in developing countries have the chance to enjoy a childhood.

While the findings of the report once again highlight slow progress on girls’ rights globally, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, says there is still reason to be optimistic. Real change, she says, is happening in areas where it once seemed impossible. Women & Girls Hub spoke to Miles about setting tough targets for tackling these issues over the next 15 years.

Women & Girls Hub: What has changed for girls’ rights since you started working in this field?

Carolyn Miles: I’ve been working on these issues for a really long time and I think the good thing is that you do see real progress in some countries in terms of the equity for girls. I’ll give you an example. I was in Mali about 18 months ago and I visited a school there. First of all, they had a headmistress not a headmaster, which is fantastic because these girls really need role models. Then when I asked her who the stars of the school were, she said we could go and meet them, and they were three girls. Ten years ago, that would not have been the case in the sixth grade. We would be lucky if there were girls in the sixth grade let alone the star students. So you do see progress and you do see change, but the disparities are still really great, which is what this report is all about.

Women & Girls Hub: What do you find most frustrating about the lack of progress for young girls?

Miles: I guess what’s disappointing is that a lot of it is not about policy. I was just in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has a policy that no girls get married under the age of 18, and yet a third of girls get married before they are 18. So obviously this isn’t about policies.

A lot of the time it is about changing behavior and it’s about convincing families to value girls as highly as they value boys. That’s why one of the things we looked at in this study is women in the highest level of government. Women in those position are more likely to change policy, but they are also role models, so families see women can be leaders, and that starts to change the way people value girls.

We’re not just trying to name and shame countries for this report – we show the report to the countries in the worst position in advance of publishing it. But what we want is to work with these countries to change the situation.

Women & Girls Hub: What can Save the Children and other international organizations do to improve things for the girls featured in this report?

Miles: We have set our sights really high for children by 2030. We want no child under five to die of preventable disease. Every child should be in school and get a basic education, and we want to change the way the world thinks about violence against children. If you look at those goals, the only way we are going to get there is if we look at the children who are worst off in all those places. The children who are worst off in health, in education and in protection. Girls are at the end of the line on most of those issues.

Women & Girls Hub: Do you think global attitudes toward girls are changing?

Miles: I do. I think a big turning point, if you look at the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), the issue of equity is a huge part of it, specifically about gender. Not only is there a specific goal about gender, but in all those 17 goals there is a huge amount of work around equity and a big recognition that, if we don’t get a gender equity shift, we will never reach any of those goals.

Women & Girls Hub: Can it get depressing when you find yourself facing such hugely ambitious targets?

Miles: I think the only way you can approach this job is looking at the glass as if it is half full. If you look at child survival, to me that is one of the most exciting pieces of progress we have made. In 1990, you had 12 million kids who died of preventable diseases and now you have under 6 million. That’s 25 years; that’s in our lifetime.

So why not be ambitious and say, if we can do that in 25 years then we can save the last 6 million in 15 years? We know exactly where those kids live, we know what they are dying of. It’s not about not knowing; it is about changing behavior. [Changing attitudes toward girls] is really hard because it is getting to the core of people’s beliefs and changing the way people think. It’s not easy to do and it will take some time, but things are changing and we have to hold on to that.

The names of the girls in the photos have been changed to protect their identities.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Kudos and a Curse: Meet the Savior of Girls in Samburu

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Hannah McNeish

Josephine Kulea has saved over 1,000 girls in Kenya from forced marriage and the female genital mutilation that usually precedes it. Her work has earned praise from Barack Obama, but she says politicians back home won't support her work in case it loses them votes.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Her face has been plastered across billboards in New York and London and she was lauded by U.S. President Barack Obama on his visit to Kenya. But Josephine Kulea sees herself as still very much a grassroots activist. She works with communities in the area where she grew up, saving girls as young as seven from forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and either being pulled out of school or never getting the chance to go. Despite national laws banning child marriage and FGM, in Samburu culture, girls can be matched to men old enough to be their grandparents, and polygamy is common.

Once cursed to death by her family for breaking up a marriage between her uncle and a seven-year-old cousin, Kulea, 30, now runs the charity The Samburu Girls Foundation, which, to date, has stopped over 1,000 girls across four counties from marrying young and missing their education. Women & Girls Hub spoke to her about how it all started with her mother and why she became the target of a death curse.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you start helping girls?

Josephine Kulea: I was following in my mom’s footsteps. My mom also fights for girls to go to school within my community because she was taken out of high school to become my dad’s third wife.

Women & Girls Hub: What about your childhood?

Kulea: I finished school but every holiday when I came home there was a new [potential] husband who wanted to marry me. My uncles wanted to marry me off because my dad passed away when I was young. Everyone was over 45 or in their 50s. I was 12, 13, 14, 15. But my mom fought for me.

After I finished school I went to nursing college and came back to work in my village. The first two girls I rescued were my own cousins. The first was a 10-year-old who was supposed to be getting married. Then two days later I got a call to say the same man, my uncle, was going to marry the youngest girl in the family who was just seven years old. She had to go through FGM on the day of the wedding. She got married and two days later we went to get her and arrest my uncle, and that became history in my village. They even had a big meeting to curse me [to death] because it was considered a very bad thing to do.

Women & Girls Hub: How did you feel when you heard about the curse?

Kulea: I knew I was not in the wrong because I was just protecting child rights. I continued getting calls from women from the same village to rescue more girls. I paid their fees with my nursing salary. It was less than $200 a month. I spent almost everything [on the girls’ education] because you have to buy uniforms and books and pens.

Women & Girls Hub: How did the Samburu Girls Foundation come about?

Kulea: In 2012 we started the organization, registering it and making it official like an NGO, so now we can ask people for money. We are now reaching out to four counties – Samburu, Marsabit, Isiolo and Laikipia. The community has donated 15 acres of land. That’s where our girls stay, we have a dormitory and dining room. Safaricom [Kenya’s largest mobile phone company] is coming to build us classrooms soon and we hope to eventually have a fully fledged school because we’re spending a lot of money on taking these girls to schools across the country.

Women & Girls Hub: How many girls have you helped?

Kulea: We’ve rescued over 1,000 girls. We have 300 girls who are directly under our organizational support. When we rescue these girls, the families normally are bitter because they are missing out on the dowry. It is sometimes up to one year until the girls are accepted back [by their families]. We talk to the parents and counsel them and the girls. Eventually we reunite them. Some parents lie to us. They really want to marry them off again, so we tell the girls that they can always come back to us, they can call us and also they become our eyes in the village and they make sure their own sisters, cousins and neighbors are not going through the same thing.

Women & Girls Hub: Is there any sign parents are starting to value educating girls?

Kulea: The problem we have is the villages in these areas have been marginalized for so long. The illiteracy levels are so high: In Samburu county it’s 80 percent. Such communities have yet to understand the value of educating girls.

Women & Girls Hub: The culture of ‘beading’ – when men give young girls beads to “book” them for sex – is this changing?

Kulea: It is dying out around the cities because more people there have embraced education. But there are a few other areas where it is still very common and as much as we try to spread awareness that it’s wrong, people feel it’s still part of our culture. Some girls feel it makes them beautiful because someone has given them these beads.

Women & Girls Hub: What was it like getting mentioned by Obama?

Kulea: It was awesome! It felt nice because sometimes you work so hard, do a lot of work and you think you’re hidden in the bush and no one notices. We are yet to get those shout-outs from the local or county government.