How do we stop the repression of women by extremists?

This article is published in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org

The deadly attacks in Paris by Islamic State militants demonstrate the need for world efforts to crack down on extremist groups that try to repress women and girls, a leading U.S. women’s rights official said.

Cathy Russell, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, said last Friday’s suicide bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 129 people reinforced the need to escalate efforts to combat Islamic State.

Islamic State, known as ISIS or ISIL, has claimed responsibility for Friday’s coordinated attacks, saying they were in retaliation for France’s involvement in U.S.-backed air strikes in Iraq and Syria.

“Women and girls have been a particular target for ISIL, just as they are for other groups … that view progress of women as a threat,” Russell told the Trust Women conference on women’s rights and trafficking run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“That mindset and that evil cannot go unchecked by the international community. We have to redouble our efforts …. It is time to reaffirm our commitment to equality and to women and girls everywhere,” she added.

Reports of Islamic State’s sexual enslavement of women and girls as young as 11 from Iraq’s Yazidi minority have provoked international outrage.

The ultra-hardline group, which considers all those opposing it as infidels who should be killed, uses a religious justification for its treatment of women and children as the spoils of war.

Difficult Recovery

Human rights lawyer Sherizaan Minwalla told the conference that one Yazidi woman she helped was forced to convert to Islam by her Islamic State abductors.

After months in captivity, she was made to wear a wedding dress before being married to an Islamic State fighter and raped every night before her escape two months later, Minwalla said.

Despite being free, her ordeal did not end. She suffered flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia, while her reluctance to tell doctors she had been raped prevented her from getting access to the right medical care, Minwalla added.

“ISIS is waging a war against women’s bodies, using sexual violence as a weapon of war. But also, when they come back their problems continue,” Minwalla told the conference.

“They’re living in abject poverty, their families are broken, half of them are dead, half of them are missing. Until they feel safe … the recovery process is very difficult.”

Most of Iraq’s Yazidi population is living in camps in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, and more than 2,000 women remain in Islamic State captivity.

The Islamic State has also lashed out at women and girls living in its self-declared caliphate, stoning women for adultery or witchcraft, Minwalla said.

The displacement caused by the insurgency has also fuelled higher levels of domestic violence, early marriage and human trafficking, she added.

At the opening of the two-day Trust Women conference, U.S. Ambassador Russell said it was unacceptable that such extremist groups were allowed to threaten women and to deny them education, jobs and economic empowerment.

Data shows that 60 million girls internationally are out of school. One in three women globally will face gender-based violence in their lifetime.

Studies have shown that every year of secondary school education can boost a woman’s earnings by 15 to 20 percent.

“When women are held back, the world is held back as well,” Russell told the conference attended by 550 delegates from 60 nations.

Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Belinda Goldsmith is Editor-in-Chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the world’s leading provider of news and information.

Image: A man, wrapped with a French flag, observes a minute of silence in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, to pay tribute to victims of Friday’s Paris attacks, France, November 16, 2015.  REUTERS/Charles Platiau.