Syria
Syrian Refugees 'sold for marriage' in Jordan
"I never thought I would marry someone I didn't love, but my family and I have been through some hard times since coming to Amman."
So says Kazal, a young Syrian refugee woman in Jordan. She has just got divorced from a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who paid her family about US $3,100 to marry her. The marriage lasted one week.
Read more at the BBC.
Carried Out: What Syrian Refugees Carry When Fleeing
Risk of Serious Gender-Based Crimes in Syria
Displacement in Syria gives way for serious gender-based crimes, warns UN official with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“This displacement is not only about loss of homes and economic security. It is also, for many, accompanied by gender-based crimes, deliberate victimization of women and children and a frightening array of assaults on human dignity,” she says.
Read more at UN News Centre.
Tracking Rape In Syria Through Social Media
Researchers are taking a new path to disclose and keep track of rape in the Syrian conflict.
The Women Under Siege project is live-tracking how sexualised violence is being used in Syria. Part of the tracking is reports on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The project’s crowdmap keeps an up-to-date tally in visual form: Incidents of sexual violence are represented by dots on a map – the larger the dot, the more reports of rape.
Go to the Women Under Siege’s Syrian crowdmap
Read more about Women Under Siege
Source: NPR
Rape is shredding Syria's social fabric
A woman approached me as I was rushing toward the D.C. Metro after giving a talk on rape in Syria last month. She asked in a low voice if she could share some information. She had DVDs, she said. On them were testimonies of Syrian women who'd been raped; in particular, a mother, a daughter and a sister all in one family.
Read more at cnn.com
Unveiled Syrian Facebook post stirs women's rights debate
Among the dozens of Facebook groups spawned by the Syrian uprising, a page supporting women's rights has suddenly received a wave of attention, because of an image posted there by one of its followers. The picture was of 21-year-old Dana Bakdounis, without the veil she had grown up wearing - and it polarised opinion.
Read more at bbc.co.uk
A New Resource: "Syrian Women & Girls: Fleeing Death, Facing Ongoing Threats And Humiliation"
Syrian women and girls coming to Lebanon are at increased risk of multiple forms of violence due to generalized insecurity and limited access to support. IRC’s rapid GBV assessment highlighted the myriad and severe protection issues women and girls faced before leaving Syria, and since arriving in Lebanon.
Read more and download the full report at awid.org
Syrian women combat online, on the ground and sometimes armed
"Syria’s media war is being waged with gory images from the ground. But preconceived notions about subservient Middle Eastern women could lead the world to assume that there have been no women active on the ground in Syria. This is simply not true: we’re just not looking hard enough," writes Ruth Michaelson at rhrealitycheck.org
Women of Homs form armed brigade
A group of women from the city of Homs have announced the formation of the “Banat al-Walid” battalion; the first female armed organization to fight against the regime in Syria. A statement declaring the formation of the battalion claimed that it was not affiliated to any other organization or militant entity.
Read more at asharq-e.com
Read more about women's rights in Syria at the new womendialogue rights map
Clerics to mull whether Syrian women can abort pregnancies from rape
Syrian women raped by gang-like militia or forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad should be allowed to undergo abortion according to a Saudi cleric.
Sheikh Ali al-Maliki described rape as one of the most heinous crimes against women and one that is worse than murder. “A body’s scars can heal but scars of the soul stay,” he told Al Arabiya.
Read more at alarabiya.net