Yet another report of the continuing tragedies of “forced marriages” ongoing in the United Kingdom and around the world:
UK: Daily Mail reports: “Girl, 15, ‘forced to marry illegal immigrant who then raped her and assaulted her little sister'”
— “The Bangladeshi, in his 40s, is also wanted over claims that he sexually assaulted the girl’s 12-year-old sister”
— “He disappeared after the elder girl, now aged 17, contacted the Metropolitan Police on June 26 because she feared she was now being forced into a second marriage.”
Taliban using children as part of ‘Violent Extemism’ — “14-year-old boy recruited by Taliban in Swat recalls recruitment”
— “Intelligence reports estimate more than 5,000 children trained so far”
— 14 year old Hazrat Ali: “They first call us to the mosques, and preach to us. Then they take us to a madrassa and they teach us things from the Quran. They teach us to use machine gun, Kalashnikov, rocket launchers, grenades, bombs. They ask us to use them only against the infidels. Then they teach us how to do a suicide attack.”
— “Ali said he longed for the day when his turn would come to be a suicide bomber. ‘There are thousands of us. The Taliban now have the power to defeat the army,’ he added.”
— Pakistani boys recall ordeal at suicide training centre
North Korea ‘Tests Weapons on Children’ — “But among the accounts they carried with them is one of the most shocking yet to emerge — namely the use of humans, specifically mentally or physically handicapped children, to test North Korea’s biological and chemical weapons.”
Communist Chinese babies ‘sold for adoption in Europe’
— “Authorities in China are investigating reports that dozens of babies who were taken from their parents for breaching the country’s strict one-child policy were sold for adoption to families in Europe and America.”
Compass: “Somalia – Islamists Behead Two Sons of Christian Leader” — Compass Direct News reports: “extremists have beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader, and the killers are searching Kenya’s refugee camps to do the same to the boys’ father.”
— “Before taking his Somali family to a Kenyan refugee camp in April, 55-year-old Musa Mohammed Yusuf himself was the leader of an underground church in Yonday village, 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Kismayo in Somalia. He had received instruction in the Christian faith from Salat Mberwa.”
— “Militants from the extremist group al Shabaab entered Yonday village on Feb. 20, went to Yusuf’s house and interrogated him on his relationship with Mberwa, leader of a fellowship of 66 Somali Christians who meet at his home at an undisclosed city. Yusuf told them he knew nothing of Mberwa and had no connection with him. The extremists left but said they would return the next day.”
— “At noon the next day, as his wife was making lunch for their children in Yonday, the al Shabaab militants showed up. ”
— “Batula Ali Arbow, Yusuf’s wife, recalled that their youngest son, Innocent, told the group that their father had left the house the previous day”
— “The extremists ordered her to stop what she was doing and took hold of three of her sons — 11-year-old Abdi Rahaman Musa Yusuf, 12-year-old Hussein Musa Yusuf and Abdulahi Musa Yusuf, 7.”
— “‘I watched my three boys dragged away helplessly as my youngest boy was crying,’ Arbow said. ‘I knew they were going to be slaughtered.'”
(Pakistan) Honour killings: Couple, 3 relatives gunned down
— “More than three-dozen attackers were dressed in Punjab police uniforms and fully equipped to avenge the so-called dishonour brought to the family due to the elopement of the girl.”
— Couple shot dead for eloping – police
— AFP: “Relatives of a Pakistani teenager who eloped and married without parental consent shot her dead in a raid on her new home which also killed her husband and in-laws, police said.”
— “‘They killed the bride, the mother and sister of the bridegroom,’ said Charsadda district police official Saleem Jan.”
— “‘They beat them first and then shot them dead,’ he told AFP.”
— Daily Telegraph: “Human rights groups have strongly condemned the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, which claim the lives of hundreds of women each year.”
Saudi working on child marriage curbs: rights chief — “Aiban said the problem is that under Islamic sharia law, the foundation of the Saudi justice system has no prohibition on child marriage and new regulations have to be crafted in harmony with sharia principles.”
Turk stabs teen daughter in ‘honour killing’
— “A 45-year-old Turkish man has admitted stabbing his 15-year-old daughter to death because she did not follow Islamic customs, German police said on Thursday.”
— “The man, a kebab shop owner in Schweinfurt, southern Germany, stabbed the teen several times with a kitchen knife as she lay sleeping on her grandmother’s couch in what police said was a premeditated act.”
— “‘As a motive for the terrible crime, the 45-year-old admitted that he had problems with the fact that his daughter did not want to follow the Muslim way,’ police said in a statement.”
— “‘He seemed visibly unaffected by the crime,’ the statement added.”
— “Germany has been shocked by around 50 ‘honour killings’ since 1996, mainly in the country’s large Turkish community.”
Gender Imbalance in Human Trafficking
— Introduction, page 36 (hard copy), page 38 (electronic)
“The root causes of migration and trafficking greatly overlap. The lack of rights afforded to women serves as the primary causative factor at the root of both women’s migrations and trafficking in women…By failure to protect and promote women’s civil, political, economic and social rights, governments create situations in which trafficking flourishes.”
— Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
———————————————————————
“According to the ILO, the majority of people trafficked for sexual exploitation or subjected to forced labor are female.”
“According to researchers, both the supply and demand sides of the trade in human beings are fed by ‘gendered’ vulnerabilities to trafficking. These vulnerabilities are the result of political, economic, and development processes that may leave some women socially and economically dependent on men. If that support from men becomes limited or withdrawn, women become dangerously susceptible to abuse. They often have no individual protection or recognition under the law, inadequate access to healthcare and education, poor employment prospects, little opportunity to own property, or high levels of social isolation. All this makes some women easy targets for harassment, violence, and human trafficking.”
“Research links the disproportionate demand for female trafficking victims to the growth of certain ‘feminized’ economic sectors (commercial sex, the ‘bride trade,’ domestic service) and other sectors characterized by low wages, hazardous conditions, and an absence of collective bargaining mechanisms. Exploitative employers prefer to use trafficked women — traditionally seen as submissive, cheap, and pliable — for simple and repetitive tasks in agriculture, food processing, labor-intensive manufacturing, and domestic servitude.”
“In countries where women’s economic status has improved, significantly fewer local women participate in commercial sex. Traffickers bring in more female victims to address the demand and also take advantage of women who migrate voluntarily to work in any industry. As commercial sex is illegal in most countries, traffickers use the resulting illegal status of migrant women that have been trafficked into commercial sex to threaten or coerce them against leaving. Gendered vulnerabilities fostered by social and institutional weaknesses in some societies — discriminatory laws and practices that tie a woman’s legal recognition, property rights, and economic opportunities to someone else — make women more likely than men to become trafficking victims. A woman who exists only through a male guardian who controls her income, identification, citizenship, and physical well-being is more susceptible to becoming a trafficking victim.”
Image from State Dept 2009 Human Trafficking Report, section "Gender Imbalance in Human Trafficking"
“The ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report sheds light on the faces of modern-day slavery and on new facets of this global problem. The human trafficking phenomenon affects virtually every country, including the United States. In acknowledging America’s own struggle with modern-day slavery and slavery-related practices, we offer partnership. We call on every government to join us in working to build consensus and leverage resources to eliminate all forms of human trafficking.”
–Secretary Clinton, June 16, 2009
