By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR , Mar 24 2023 – An open hearing in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is raising hopes that this country and other Latin American nations might overturn or at least mitigate the severe laws that criminalize abortion.

That will happen if the Inter-American Court rules that El Salvador violated the right to health of Beatriz, as the plaintiff is known. In 2013 she sought to have her pregnancy terminated because it was high risk and her life was in danger.”I hope that in the end my daughter’s name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman.” — Beatriz´s mother

But she was not given an abortion, only a tardy cesarean section, which affected her already deteriorated health and, according to the plaintiffs, eventually led to her death in October 2017.

The hearing on the emblematic case was held Mar. 22-23 at the Inter-American Court in San José, Costa Rica. Beatriz’s case builds on similar ones: the cases of Amelia, also from El Salvador, Esperanza from the Dominican Republic, and Amelia from Nicaragua.

The seven judges heard the arguments of the plaintiffs, the representatives of the Salvadoran State and the witnesses on both sides.

After the hearing, the parties have 30 days to deliver their written arguments and the magistrates will then take several months to debate and reach a resolution.

The open hearing held by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Beatriz v. El Salvador case is the first time that the complete ban on abortion has been tried, and the verdict will have implications for Latin America, a region that is especially restrictive in terms of women’s sexual and reproductive rights. CREDIT: Inter-American Court of Human Rights

A historic case

“I hope that in the end my daughter’s name will be vindicated, and that what happened to her will not happen again to any other woman,” Beatriz’s mother said when testifying on the stand. Her name was not revealed in court.

The hearing has drawn international attention because it is considered historic for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in a region that is especially restrictive with regard to the practice of abortion.

“This will be the first case where the Court will rule on the absolute prohibition of the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, particularly regarding the risk to health and when the fetus is nonviable,” Julissa Mantilla Falcón, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), told the Inter-American Court.

Beatriz turned to the IACHR when the Constitutional Court of El Salvador denied, on Apr. 11, 2013, her request for an abortion.

On Apr. 19, the IACHR issued a precautionary measure in favor of Beatriz, and on May 27, 2013, it asked the Inter-American Court to adopt provisional measures which would be binding on the State.

In its November 2020 Merits Report, the IACHR established that the Salvadoran State was responsible for the disproportionate impact on various rights of Beatriz, by failing to provide her with timely medical treatment due to the laws that criminalize abortion.

The IACHR identified the disproportionate impact of this legislation on Salvadoran women and girls, especially the poor.

The Commission stated that it did not expect full compliance by the State with the recommendations of the report, and therefore referred the case to the Inter-American Court, which now, ten years later, is a few months away from handing down a resolution.

Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the Beatriz v. El Salvador case, hopes that the Inter-American Court sentence will set a legal precedent and pave the way for the modification of the 1998 law criminalizing abortion under any circumstances in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

For her part, Anabel Recinos, from the Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion, one of the Salvadoran organizations that are co-plaintiffs in the case, told IPS that she hopes that the Inter-American Court ruling will set a new precedent.

She said her hope is that the court will rule that laws in El Salvador and the region banning abortion under all circumstances must be modified.

In addition to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are the countries in the region where abortion is completely prohibited in their penal codes. It is only legal in five countries in Latin America, while it is allowed only in strict circumstances in the rest.

“Or at least it should be allowed for specific reasons or exceptions, such as safeguarding health and life, or the incompatibility of the fetus’s life outside the womb,” Recinos said.

Twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname and Uruguay.

The IACHR and the Court make up the inter-American human rights system. They are independent bodies and in the case of the Court the sentences are final and binding, although they are not always enforced.

Recinos spoke to IPS at the University of El Salvador, in the country’s capital, where dozens of people gathered to watch the hearing, broadcast live from San José, on a large screen.

The activist added that it is likely that the Court will rule against the Salvadoran State, backing the IACHR’s conclusions.

The Court is made up of judges Ricardo Pérez Manrique (Uruguay), Humberto Sierra Porto (Colombia), Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor (Mexico), Rodrigo Mudrovitsch (Brazil), Nancy Hernández López (Colombia) and Verónica Gómez (Argentina).

In March 2003, Beatriz requested an abortion during her second pregnancy, because she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy organs, and preeclampsia, a dangerous increase in blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as other health problems.

In other words, her life was at risk. In addition, the fetus had malformations and would not live long at birth.

However, the medical personnel, although they were aware that an abortion was indicated to save Beatriz’s life, did not carry it out due to the fear of prosecution.

Beatriz was forced to continue with a pregnancy that continued to harm her health as the days went by.

But after the Inter-American Court granted provisional measures, Beatriz underwent a cesarean section on Jun. 3, 2013, almost three months after requesting an abortion.

The child, who was born with anencephaly, missing parts of the brain and skull, died just five hours later.

Activists for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in El Salvador demonstrate on Mar. 22 outside the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, during the hearing for the emblematic case of Beatriz v. El Salvador. Many carried green balloons, whose color is a symbol of the fight for the right to abortion in Latin America. CREDIT: Collaborating Organizations

Misogyny on the part of the State

Since 1998 El Salvador, this Central American country of 6.7 million inhabitants, has been the most drastic in the region in the persecution of abortion, punishing women who terminate their pregnancies with sentences of up to 30 years, in all cases, even when the life and health of the pregnant woman is at risk or in cases of rape.

The legislation mainly affects poor women in rural areas. According to data from women’s rights organizations, 181 such cases have been prosecuted since 2019.

Guillermo Ortiz, a gynecologist and obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, testified before the Inter-American Court: “Yes, I saw many women die because they did not have access to a safe abortion, despite my having requested it.”

In her testimony, Beatriz’s mother said that the many doctors who treated her daughter had recommended that the pregnancy be terminated, but did not dare to perform an abortion or c-section to remove the fetus, for fear of going to prison.

“They told my daughter that they couldn’t, because in El Salvador it’s a crime, and if they did, they could go to jail,” said the mother.

“The State failed Beatriz twice,” said the mother, before breaking down in tears.

She was referring to the failure to carry out an abortion promptly, despite her daughter’s serious health conditions. She also was talking about a motorcycle accident that the 22-year-old suffered later.

“She had an accident that shouldn’t have been fatal, she was in stable condition” when she was admitted to the hospital in Jiquilisco, a municipality in the eastern department of Usulután.

But a storm caused a flood in some parts of the hospital, so they transferred her to the hospital in Usulután, the capital of the department.

“The doctor who treated her there didn’t even know what lupus was,” she said. In the hospital, Beatriz caught pneumonia.

The mother’s testimony and that of the other witnesses at the hearing has been closely followed in El Salvador and other nations by feminist and human rights organizations that have been monitoring and criticizing the country’s strict anti-abortion law.

By Fawzia Moodley
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 24 2023 – Greed, poverty, irresponsible legal mining giants which exploited and then abandoned South Africa’s mines, together with the government’s failure to enforce regulations on the mining giants to rehabilitate mines before closing them, have created fertile ground for a thriving illegal artisanal mining sector called Zama Zama, many of them run by criminal syndicates.

South Africa’s economy has largely been mining based, and under apartheid, white-owned mining companies exploiting lucrative gold, diamond, coal, and chrome grew rich, using cheap local and migrant labour from neighbouring countries.

Post-apartheid, the ANC government has tried to bring black ownership and small-scale miners into the mining sector and, more recently, attempted to decriminalise artisanal miners who use rudimentary tools and are largely involved in surface mining.

According to submissions made by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), the Benchmarks Foundation, and the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG), policy weaknesses, lack of enforcement, bureaucratic bungling, and red tape have ensured that the status quo from apartheid remains largely intact.

The LRC contends that retrenchments due to mechanisation or closure of unprofitable mines have increased illegal mining. The lack of enforcement of laws relating to the rehabilitation of closed mines has created space for criminal Zama Zama and artisanal miners who are perforce illegal to operate in disused or abandoned mines.

Artisanal miners in the North West province of South Africa at work. Credit: NAAM

With the publishing of the Policy on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in March 2022, artisanal miners all over the country are forming cooperatives in a bid to be legalised. But it is an uphill battle to get permits.

The LRC also warns of further conflict and xenophobia because the law precludes foreign Zama Zama from getting permits. However, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe says: “It must be clear that once an individual illegally enters our country and engages in illegal economic activity, such an individual cannot be sanitised through being issued with a small-scale mining license.”

Robert Krause, an environmental researcher, says that the roots of the problem lie in “the mining houses shirking their environmental rehabilitation responsibilities as well as failure to invest in a post-mining economy for workers and the surrounding community.”

There are nearly 6000 ownerless and derelict mines, many of them “abandoned by mining capital before the present regulatory dispensation under the National Environmental Management Act and the Financial Provisioning regulations.”

Krause says there is “a persisting pattern of large mining houses selling off their mines towards closure to companies they know full well will not be in a position to carry out their rehabilitation duties.”

Legal loopholes and lax regulation by the regulator enable this.

“The companies that end up with liabilities frequently go insolvent, and the financial provision for closure is often treated as just another claim.”

He says, “Mine abandonment fuels illegal or artisanal operations, as low-grade ore is left behind, convenient entrances remain open, and people in need of work are thrown out of the economy.”

When the profitable reserves are depleted, there’s an employment crisis. Then, the option for survival, mainly where closure is not done properly, is to become a Zama Zama.

Krause says the artisanal miners need material support and capacitation from mining companies and the state, “instead they are still often treated like criminals while violent criminal syndicates flourish.”

According to an Oxpeckers environment journalism probe a few years ago, “a fortune has been set aside for mine rehabilitation in South Africa. But large mines are not being properly closed, and the money cannot be touched.”

Oxpeckers say that although the money cannot be used for rehabilitation while a mine is still operational, the DMRE can use it if it is abandoned.

“The department is yet to provide an instance in which this money has been used, however. Instead, most mines are not deemed legally closed, and the money cannot be touched.”

But Mantashe says: “It is estimated that it would cost over R49 billion to rehabilitate these mines. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) receives R140 million per annum for the rehabilitation of mines. With this allocation, we can only rehabilitate at least three mines and seal off 40 shafts per year.”

The minister revealed in September 2022 that 135 shafts in the Eastern, Central, and Western Basins in Gauteng (province) were sealed over three years. The DMRE intended to seal off another 20 in the current financial year, prioritising the Krugersdorp area where Zama Zama gang raped a film crew in July last year.

Mantashe says that the rehabilitation of mines is a long terms project: “We must appreciate that it would take a long time to completely rehabilitate all these mines at this rate due to budget constraints and security threats to officials executing this programme.”

Advocates for the legalisation of artisanal miners say the government needs to provide resources to fund environmental assessments and facilitate a local buyers’ market via a national buying entity to sell their mined products.

“People in South Africa need to finally see the benefits of the mineral resources of South Africa, as in the past colonial and Apartheid practices coupled with large-scale mining have deprived the majority of this benefit,” the LRC group says.

Clearly, this is a pipe dream, as the struggle by artisanal miners to get permits to become legal has underlined.

The irony is that their legalisation will not only allow them to earn a living but also pay taxes and end their constant harassment by criminal elements and the police alike.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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By Shivan Fazil and Alaa Tartir
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 24 2023 – Over the past two decades Iraq has been affected by several waves of intense conflict and violence. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by a multinational coalition led by the United States and United Kingdom toppled the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

It also ushered in years of chaos and civil war, as a variety of armed groups vied for power and territory and targeted coalition forces and the fledgling post-Ba’athist Iraqi Army.

A period of relative calm in the early 2010s was broken by the rise of the extremist Islamic State group, which occupied large parts of the country from 2014 until it was largely defeated by Iraqi forces with the support of a US-led international coalition in 2017.

Today Iraq is enjoying its most stable period since 2003. Armed violence persists in different forms, but it is sporadic, fragmented and localized. However, the country remains fragile and divided, and its people face an array of deepening challenges that the state is struggling to address. This Topical Backgrounder aims to provide a snapshot of the situation in Iraq 20 years since the invasion.

A fragile, oil-dependent economy

Crude oil exports accounted for an estimated 95 per cent of federal revenues in 2020. Successive governments have done little to wean Iraq off this heavy dependency on oil rents and diversify the economy. This has led to a bloated public sector characterized by patronage and to a shortage of jobs for new graduates—especially those without the necessary connections and networks.

The dependency on oil rents also exposes the Iraqi economy to fluctuations in global oil prices. Not only does this make long-term development planning difficult, but in 2020, when global oil prices plunged, the government was left unable to fund basic services or even pay public-sector salaries and pensions.

Public debt reached 84 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), and GDP itself fell 16 per cent, inflaming anger at the government. Although oil prices quickly recovered, two years of government paralysis and political turmoil have made it difficult for Iraq to take advantage and invest the increased revenues.

Despite having large natural gas reserves, Iraq currently relies on gas imports from Iran. The US and Iraq’s European partners are keen to end this dependency and to help Iraq become energy-independent.

However, the political and economic turmoil of the past few years in Iraq have stalled investment in capacity to separate and process gas from Iraqi oil fields, and instead vast quantities of gas associated with oil extraction are flared off.

This leaves Iraq still dependent on Iranian gas and electricity imports, greatly increases its climate footprint and creates acute air pollution in parts of the country. The situation is a prime illustration of the complexity of Iraq’s security challenges and governance failures, which interact in complex ways with its oil-dependent economy, tumultuous regional dynamics and environmental issues.

The changing face of armed violence

Today, Islamic State is thought to be unable to recruit more members in Iraq and only an estimated 500 fighters are still active in the country. Major military operations against Islamic State have thus ended.

In 2020, the US began reducing its military footprint in Iraq—which had risen sharply in response to the rise of Islamic State—and only around 2500 US military personnel remain in the country, at Iraq’s invitation, in an advisory role.

A key task as the threat from Islamic State dissipates is to deal with the Popular Mobilization Forces (an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization comprising a number of predominantly Shia militias, some supported by Iran) as well as smaller militia groups linked to ethno-religious minorities in the country’s north that were formed in the name of community self-defence.

One of the goals of successive Iraqi governments has been integrating these forces into the Iraqi security forces, but progress has been slow. Most of the militias are nominally under the Ministry of Defence.

However, many seem to act independently of government and outside institutional jurisdiction. Some have been accused of human rights violations and abuses against civilians, particularly during the mass anti-government protests in 2019.

Another task, being urged by the US and the anti-Islamic State coalition, is to improve how the Peshmerga—the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI)—and the Iraqi Armed Forces interact.

A lack of coordination and intelligence-sharing has undermined the efficiency of security operations, particularly in the disputed territories of Iraq. Prior to the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the federal government in Baghdad were jointly administering security in these territories.

Iraq has also suffered from the spillover of civil conflicts and counterinsurgency in neighbouring countries, especially in some of its more remote regions. Iran and Türkiye have both launched missile strikes or armed incursions against opposition forces on Iraqi territory in recent years.

Identity politics and worsening state-society relations

The United States and other members of the coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and supported its transition to post-Ba’athist democracy lacked a long-term vision. They often failed to anticipate the consequences of major decisions, such as the disbanding of the Iraqi Army in 2003 or several initiatives put forward by the transitional authorities.

One of the most consequential of these initiatives was the establishment of Muhasasa Ta’ifia, a form of consociationalist elite bargain that was adopted after 2005. Under Muhasasa Ta’ifia, government posts, sinecures and departments are shared out among the Kurdish, Shia and Sunni political elites after an election—often after a lot of fraught inter-factional horse-trading.

Voters are offered a choice of parties within a given ethnosectarian bloc, but no choice of policy platforms. There is no parliamentary opposition to hold the government accountable.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia was conceived as a way to stop Iraq fracturing and divisions along the major ethnosectarian faultlines, to encourage the groups to collaborate and to avoid one group becoming too dominant. While it has arguably succeeded to an extent in those aims, it has also given rise to ineffective governments, lack of accountability, and a public sector rife with corruption and patronage.

As a result, a major new faultline has emerged, with ordinary citizens united across ethnosectarian lines by grievances against the governing class. Along with corruption, citizens complain of economic mismanagement, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, weak public services and more. Largely youth-led anti-government protests in 2019 expressed their feelings of alienation from the political elite with the slogan ‘We want a homeland’.

Mass protest has been growing since 2015. The October Protest or Tishreen Movement that began in 2019 was large enough to topple the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in early 2020 and was violently suppressed by state forces and militias.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia caused another political crisis in 2021–22 when elites were unable to agree on a new government for over a year after a general election in October 2021. Voter turnout in that election fell to a record low of 44 per cent, illustrating the growing popular disillusionment and frustration with the political system.

Muhasasa Ta’ifia seems unlikely to change in the near term, but there are some signs that it is slowly breaking down, and perhaps even starting to make way for a more issue-based politics. For example, political factions have recently been forming alliances beyond their ethno-sectarian blocs.

Following the 2021 election, Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shia Sadrist movement, proposed forming a majority government with a sizeable parliamentary opposition—although this was rejected by other factions.

More positively, the Tishreen Movement spawned its own political candidates, some of whom won seats. Their potential to influence federal politics is negligible, but they may be able to push forward change in subnational politics.

The Kurdistan Region in federal Iraq

The Kurdistan Regional Government has a peaceful, if occasionally fraught, relationship with the federal government in Baghdad. The KRG enjoys a high level of autonomy, which includes maintaining its own military forces, the Peshmerga.

Early on in the transition process after 2003, Kurdistan was recognized as Iraq’s most stable region, and its leaders as having valuable experience of government that the other transitional authorities lacked. This was also partly due to the no-fly zone and other measures to protect the Iraqi Kurds from Iraqi government attacks implemented by the United States and European partners after the first Gulf War in 1991.

The Kurds in Iraq have largely distanced themselves from the Kurdish independence movements in neighbouring Iran, Syria and Turkey, to the extent that Peshmerga forces have even clashed with Turkey’s Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) forces operating on Iraqi soil.

Relations between the KRG and the federal government are complicated by long-standing disagreements over oil revenue sharing and control of the disputed territories, which include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The KRG brought these territories under its control after Iraqi security forces withdrew in the face of Islamic State advances in 2014. Resolving the status of the disputed territories should have taken place a decade earlier, according to the 2005 constitution.

When the major military operations to defeat Islamic State came to an end in 2017, tensions between the federal government and the KRG were intensified by the KRG’s push for greater autonomy. The KRG organized a referendum for independence that also included the disputed territories that were then under its control (including Kirkuk).

The federal government rejected the referendum and retook the disputed territories with military force, supported by the Popular Mobilization Forces, and implemented other punitive measures against the KRG.

The KRG and state-society relations in the KRI have similar problems to those found at the federal level. The KRG budget relies heavily on independent oil exports and on budget transfers from Baghdad, removing the incentive to diversify the economy. And the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have been in a power-sharing agreement since the unification of two Iraqi Kurdish enclaves in 2006.

This agreement sees government and administrative posts shared between the two parties—an arrangement not dissimilar to Iraq’s Muhasasa Ta’ifia. As in the rest of Iraq, residents of the KRI complain of corruption, patronage and mismanagement by the Kurdish authorities. Many have left Iraq to seek asylum in Europe and elsewhere.

Relations with Iran and the US

In the field of diplomacy, Iraq’s strongest relationships and ties are with Iran and the US. Nevertheless, Iraq has sought to diversify its diplomatic and economic relations in recent years, including with Arab Gulf states as well as Egypt and Jordan.

Iran is Iraq’s largest trading partner, although Iraq’s imports from Iran—worth around $9 billion in 2018—vastly outweigh trade in the other direction. Iraq and Iran have also cooperated extensively in the fight against Islamic State.

Iran’s influence in Iraq, much of it exercised through Shia political factions, has been a source of anger among protesters, especially as Iranian-backed militia groups have been involved in violence against anti-government protests.

In addition to having guided the post-invasion political transition, the USA remains Iraq’s main source of security support and of military and development aid. The USA has recently increased pressure on Iraq for tighter control of dollar sales in order to stamp out potential money laundering that benefits Iran and Syria.

Steps taken to do this contributed to a significant drop in the dollar value of the Iraqi dinar, leading to soaring inflation in early 2023 and the replacement of the central bank governor.

Iraq has been caught in the middle of regional tensions, particularly due to its diplomatic and geographic closeness to Iran. In recent years Iraq has tried to take an active role in resolving these tensions. For example, with French support Iraq has organized two regional summits—one in Baghdad the other in Amman, Jordan—aimed at de-escalating regional tensions. In 2021 Iraq hosted talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a prelude to the China-brokered détente announced in March 2023.

The situation for Iraq’s minorities

State failure to protect Iraq’s many ethno-religious minorities is a long-standing problem. Since 2003, many minorities have been displaced due to insecurity, often migrating to the KRI—which was seen as calmer, safer and more tolerant—and in many cases out of Iraq altogether.

The Islamic State group targeted minorities, particularly those of non-Abrahamic faiths. The worst of this was in Nineveh Province, known for its mosaic of ethnic and religious diversity. The Islamic State attacks on the Yezidi group in Sinjar district were so devastating that they have been recognized as a genocide.

Many of the minorities who were displaced during the Islamic State occupation have not returned—partly down to the presence of the many militias still active in their areas of origin and a general sense of insecurity, but also because they feel they can make a better life in their new homes.

A UN-brokered agreement between the KRG and the federal government in 2021 that was aimed at normalizing the security situation in Sinjar has had little effect on the ground that would encourage the internally displaced Yezidis to return.

Although minority citizens in Iraq are experiencing lower levels of armed violence based on their identity, discrimination against them seems to have worsened in the wake of the Islamic State occupation. SIPRI has been working in the Nineveh Plains region on ways to improve intercommunal relations and help minorities to re-establish their cultural practices and social relations.

Multiple civil society and grassroots groups are pushing for a reimagining of Iraq, where ethnicity and sect play a much smaller role. However, Iraq’s powerful political blocs are keen to maintain the current power-sharing arrangement, even though it does not seem likely to bring prosperity or lasting peace.

The legacy of the invasion still runs through many of the challenges that Iraq faces, but no longer defines them. Gradually, Iraq is shaping its own destiny—hopefully to the benefit of all its citizens.

Read more about SIPRI’s package of interviews, opinion pieces and reference materials to mark the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Shivan Fazil is a Researcher with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Dr Alaa Tartir is a Senior Researcher and Director of SIPRI’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

IPS UN Bureau

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By Anonymous
Mar 24 2023 – Afghan girls have been denied the right to attend school and university since the Taliban took power in August 2021. But as if this was not tragic enough, many girls have also been forced to marry too early in life.

A combination of poverty and the fear of girls being forced to marry the islamist fighters of the Taliban movement are the main reasons behind the increasing rate of teenage marriages in the country.

In order to save them from the Taliban, a group that violates their basic human rights, parents would rather marry off their underage daughters elsewhere.

Forced marriage of underage girls has been practiced in Afghanistan before but it has increased significantly since the return of the Taliban to power in 2021, twenty years after they were ousted by the U.S troops.

The Taliban have forcefully married dozens of girls, often using intimidation, coercion, and death threats. Also, the covid pandemic, closing of schools, the disappearance of employment opportunities for women and the harsh economic situation has forced families to marry off their teenage daughters in order to cope. The dowry received from the marriage helps to feed the rest of the family for some time.

According to the UN Childrens’ Fund UNICEF, girls are sold into marriage even as babies. UNICEF estimates that 28 per cent of girls are forced into marriage before they turn 18.

“I have even seen girls married off at the age of 14 in one of the northern provinces”, says Zainab (name changed), a woman activist. She is deeply concerned about girls marrying under-age, saying it is violence against teenage girls.

The Taliban have resorted to kidnapping girls and threatening them with forced marriage. Besides, the Taliban gather information on the number of unmarried girls in a family and if there are any, they want them for marriage.

They send forms to be filled out in the mosques, particularly requesting for information on girls aged between 13 and 18, according to Zainab. Families would therefore give up their daughters to relatives for marriage rather than let them fall into the hands of strangers.

In Kabul and in other provinces, members of Taliban have even threatened to kill family members of under-age girls who refuse to give their daughters up for marriage and have forced teenage girls to marry men with two or three wives. Young and educated girls have had haunting experience from such cases.

“My friend is 15 years”, narrates Maria (name changed), “a Taliban commander of over 50 years, and already married to two wives came and proposed to her. She turned him down. The girl’s family had to flee in the night to a hiding place without even taking their belongings”.

In another case, Marwa (name changed) in Kabul said a member of the Taliban had sent her first wife to her family to propose to a 10th grade girl, threatening to kill their son if they refuse to give up their daughter for marriage. The teenage girl’s father had no option but to hand her over. She was 30 years younger than the man.

This story was produced by Learning Together, a voluntary network of Finnish female journalists. The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.

Excerpt:

The author is an Afghanistan-based female journalist, trained with Finnish support before the Taliban take-over. Her identity is withheld for security reasons.