The Woman Bringing Boko Haram Wives Back to Their Families

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 Siobhán O’Grady

Social media activism inspired Fatima Askira to collect clothes for women affected by Boko Haram. Nearly four years later, she is pioneering programs to help them rejoin their communities.

In early 2013, as women and children fleeing Boko Haram flooded into the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, Fatima Askira watched them arrive to under-resourced makeshift camps with nothing more than the tattered clothes on their backs.

At the time, she didn’t consider herself particularly qualified to help them. She had recently graduated from the University of Maiduguri with a degree in botany, and had little experience working with victims of conflict – especially ones who may have survived brutal attacks, kidnappings and rape at the hands of the militant organization that has, in recent years, killed more than 20,000 and displaced millions more across northeastern Nigeria and the surrounding Lake Chad region.

But after bearing witness to their suffering in her hometown, Askira was inspired to start with what she knew how to do: collect clothes to donate to some of the displaced. With the help of a social media campaign, her charity drive ballooned from a small-scale local collection into a national volunteer network that brought donated clothing, toiletries and food to Maiduguri from across Nigeria. Askira, now 26, has since formalized that effort into the Borno Women Development Initiative. She and the NGO’s 19 other volunteers and staff focus on working with local government officials and humanitarian agencies to run reintegration programs at safe houses for women who either willingly joined or were forcibly recruited by Boko Haram.

Women & Girls Hub spoke with Askira about the challenges that arise when these women leave the extremist group and try to rejoin their old communities.

Women & Girls Hub: Do the women who end up at these safe houses have a variety of experiences in captivity, or do they share a similar narrative of what life was like under Boko Haram?

Fatima Askira: There are different kinds of women being rescued. The women who did not go into the bush but who were living under Boko Haram control because their villages were taken over by the group are the ones who can more easily reintegrate into the camps, because they were not really radicalized.

But some of the women have been wives to Boko Haram, and they were rescued by the Nigerian army and are now being kept in safe homes. Most of them were married to Boko Haram voluntarily and were not forced into it, because they married [the Boko Haram fighters] when they were still in our society. When their husbands were chased out of the communities, then the women followed them. Some of the women followed voluntarily, some were forced.

When I was speaking with one of the girls recently, I asked her what it was like to be living for so long with Boko Haram. I said, “Didn’t you feel like you wanted to come back to your family after all these years that you stayed with Boko Haram?” And she said, “Fatima, it’s not like I have a choice. He’s my husband and I married him because I love him and then this happened. And I thought of my parents for a while, and then I had to forget about them because life goes on.”

Women & Girls Hub: For the women who left their families voluntarily, how do their parents react if their daughters want to come home?

Askira: It’s not possible to integrate any of them quickly back into their families. They may be radicalized already, so they have to go through the deradicalization process and learn countering narratives before we can integrate them back into their communities. And some of the parents say they won’t accept them immediately after they are rescued. You know how hard it is for them: Your daughter spent about four years with Boko Haram in a place like that, you don’t know who she is, you’ve forgotten what she looks like.

But from the other side, some of the women at the safe house don’t socialize, they don’t talk to you. It’s often easier for them to speak with each other because they are like a family now. Still, sometimes it’s possible to reach them. In one instance, we played them propaganda audio from an imam who split from Boko Haram earlier this year and then condemned the group for being too violent. He hadn’t left Boko Haram entirely, but there was some balance and sanity to what he said. They heard how violent it was and they heard from a person they trust that it is wrong.

Women & Girls Hub: Do the women seem to have been deeply involved in the conflict itself?

Askira: They don’t even know the extent of the violence caused by their husbands, that’s the most amazing thing. When we played a video of a bomb blast and the destruction it caused to try to explain this to them, there was so much surprise on their faces. When they were with Boko Haram, they didn’t go out and they were kind of restricted in an area without access to news or information.

Women & Girls Hub: How do you see your project moving forward?

Askira: The next project we want to do is set up an informal school for the women to be able to access a little bit of Western knowledge. We believe that would maybe bring out their interest in going back to school and tell them school is not in conflict with their religion, but rather that school will further motivate them or be the source of a future for them, because after school you can get a job.

Women & Girls Hub: You’ve described a lot of damage to the local community caused by Boko Haram. Have you faced difficulties convincing the community that reintegration is necessary for peace?

Askira: What I’ve come to believe is that the Boko Haram fighters, some of them are victims, too. Equally as we have families, they have families, and their families did not commit any wrong in society because their children joined this movement. So if we’re going to bring some sort of balance, we need to go down to the communities, reorient them and sensitize them to the importance of accepting some of these people back.

When I started, initially a lot of people said, “It won’t work out, why are you wasting your time? Nobody will support you, nobody will assist you.” And I said, “I still want to do it.” And sometimes it’s very challenging for us to access materials and reach out to others. But you just keep doing it in any little way you can.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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.

Pakistani women risking all to fight for their rights

The attack Kainat Soomro suffered is more than any 13-year-old should endure, but sadly, her victimization didn't end there—and she's not the only one to suffer sexual violence followed by victim blaming, in a troubling trend that makes victims afraid to come forward. Read an excerpt below, and click through to read more about the bravery Soomro and her family have shown in the face of stigma and tragedy; as well as the stories of other women who survived their attacks, even saw their attackers sent to jail, only to be treated as outcasts themselves. tampabay.com - KARACHI, Pakistan — Kainat Soomro was 13 years old and on her way to buy a toy for her newborn niece when three men kidnapped her, held her for several days and repeatedly raped her.

Eight years later, she is still battling for justice. She sits on a steel-framed bed in her parents' three-bedroom home and holds her blue shawl tight around her body. When she describes the horror of her captivity, her voice is barely a whisper, but it gains strength when she talks of the fight she has been waging: going to Pakistan's courts, holding protests, rejecting the rulings of the traditional Jirga council, taking on the powerful landlord and politician who she says are protecting her attackers.

The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of sexual abuse, but Kainat has gone public with her case. Her battle for justice has inspired an award-winning 2013 movie, Outlawed in Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot by the Taliban, invited Kainat to the Nobel award ceremony, and her fund has given Kainat financial help.

Yet Kainat's family has paid a high price for her bravery. One sister remains unmarried, and another was divorced because her in-laws were ashamed to be associated with Kainat. In 2010, her brother was killed over his sister's refusal to stay silent.

Read the rest here.