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In India they are forced into surrogacy financially. They feel that it’s “honorable” to earn money this way and women aren’t allowed to have most jobs there. This isn’t as forced as the handmaids, but it’s still forced for survival

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Julie Bindel, a strident opponent of surrogacy, travelled to India to find out more about a practice worth an estimated £690m a year on the subcontinent

In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, my driver is looking for one of the city's IVF clinics. We turn on to a busy main road and I spot a sign on a crumbling wall reading "test tube babies".

I climb the filthy stairwell and enter a small, dark reception area. In the adjoining room I spot a hospital stretcher and shelves full of metal petri dishes, forceps and hypodermic needles.

Dr Rana* leads me into a windowless office. Before we even sit down, he is telling me about a change in India's surrogacy policy.

In October last year, the government told fertility clinics to stop all surrogate embryo transfers to foreigners. The move follows a proposed change in the law that would limit surrogacy to Indian couples, or where at least one of the commissioning parents has an Indian passport and residency.

Having established that neither I nor the woman posing as my husband's sister own an Indian passport, Rana advises me to go to Thailand.

"It costs twice the price [that it does] here," says Rana, "but they will even do sex selection, so many people will go from India."

Having heard many stories about how commonplace outsourcing pregnancy and reproduction is, I am in India to investigate the country's "rent-a-womb" industry.

As a feminist campaigner against sexual abuse of women, and in particular the sex trade, I feel sick at the idea of wombs for rent. Sitting in the clinic, seeing smartly dressed women come in to access fertility services, all I could think about was how desperate a woman must be to carry a child for money. I know from other campaigners against womb trafficking that many surrogates are coerced by abusive husbands and pimps. Watching the smiling receptionist fill out forms on behalf of prospective commissioning parents, I could only wonder at the misery and pain experienced by the women who will end up being viewed as nothing but a vessel.

Stigma is rarely an issue for those who outsource pregnancy to poor, desperate women in India, but there is plenty levelled at surrogate mothers. Many choose to leave home during their pregnancy, as it is not seen as a respectable way to earn money, particularly if they are from rural India.

Commercial surrogacy is illegal in many countries, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain among them. In India, though, the industry - built on sex, race and class supremacy - is not only legal but estimated to be worth more than $1bn (£690m) a year.

Surrogates are paid about £4,500 to rent their wombs at this particular clinic, a huge amount in a country where, in 2012, average monthly earnings stood at $215 and a fifth of people live below the national poverty line. Clinics can make up to £18,000 from commissioning parents. The cost of bringing home a surrogate baby from India is approximately five times less than the sum charged in the US.

But while surrogates are usually from poorer backgrounds, the implanted eggs are selected from women up to the age of 25, usually highly educated and screened for any hereditary illness.

All surrogates who go through these clinics are told what and when to eat and drink, and monitored to ensure they are taking their medication and maintaining their personal hygiene.

A "residential colony" is being built with money donated by several fertility clinicians to house up to 10 surrogates during the course of their pregnancy.

I decided to visit four clinics in Gujarat, one of India's most religious states - known as the country's surrogacy capital - posing as a woman interested in hiring a surrogate and egg donor to gain access to those providing the services. I wanted to be able to speak from experience about the human rights abuses that result from the practice, and to become more involved in the international campaign to abolish it.

I was told it is common practice to plant embryos in two or more surrogates and to perform abortions if more than one pregnancy takes hold. Similarly, if several embryos are implanted in one surrogate and a multiple pregnancy occurs, unwanted foetuses will often be aborted.

Approximately 12,000 foreigners come to India each year to hire surrogates, many of them from the UK.

'We will show you a catalogue and you can choose the surrogate'

The second clinic I visit is in a quiet, suburban area of Ahmedabad, the largest city in the state.

Having spoken to the receptionist, I am introduced to an administrator who takes my medical history. I tell her I want to access egg donation and surrogacy services, and she tells me they "do all of that". I ask if the surrogates live in a hostel during pregnancy, which I had seen on television back home, and she shakes her head. I'm told I can pay for a woman to be housed for nine months, "or if you want to save money do it for a bit and then send her back home".

In each of the clinics I visit I ask how much the surrogates are paid. No one would give me an exact figure, but one doctor told me that the women earn six years' income for nine months' work.

At 11am, on the eve of Diwali, the ancient Hindu festival of light, one clinic is busy. Several women are applying to become surrogates; some of them, seemingly illiterate, ask the receptionist to fill in the forms for them. Others, well dressed, smiling, and accompanied by their husbands, are waiting for appointments. At least 150 women accessing IVF treatment attend the clinic each month.

I am told the clinic can do nothing for me. "Because of human rights the government is now closing [surrogacy services]. Maybe it is because the children are not treated well," says one of the doctors. I had never previously heard of children born through surrogacy being harmed by commissioning parents, but there have been cases where children have been abandoned and left in India with the birth mother. In 2012, an Australian couple left behind one of the twins born to an Indian surrogate mother, reportedly because they could not afford to bring up two children.

The next morning I am booked in for a consultancy at a third clinic, with Dr Mehta*. After filling in several forms, with questions about my history of infertility, I pay my 1,500 rupees (£15) for a consultation. I tell Mehta that my friend Lisa, with whom I'm travelling, is of Indian origin, and willing to be the official commissioning parent and then hand over the baby to me. I ask about egg donation, and how I choose the donor.

"Egg donation is by an anonymous donor. You can give us preferences, such as height and hair colour, but you will have to rely on us," says Mehta. "The donor will not know to whom her eggs are given and you will not be knowing whose eggs they are. The surrogate will meet you. We will show you a catalogue and you can choose the surrogate."

All four doctors I meet in Gujarat tell me it is bad for the women to be removed from home during this period, but all were willing to arrange this. For a price.

"We can do that if you are willing, but you will have to pay for that," says Mehta. "We don't want to separate the surrogate from her family because if she lives from two to nine months in a separate room and environment then it will affect her mental health."

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Surrogate mothers rest at a facility in Anand town. Photograph: Mansi Thapliyal/Reuters

I have heard several stories of women being forced or coerced into surrogacy by husbands or even pimps, and ask Mehta if she is aware of this happening.

"Without the husbands' [of the surrogates] consent we don't do surrogacy. We don't give all the money before the delivery. We take from you but we hand it over to her once she hands over the child to you. We give her in instalments so she will also take care she will deliver the baby no problem."

Mehta said they try to avoid the women forming bonds with the baby by giving them drugs to stop lactation. "She will not produce milk at all and she will not be shown the baby."

Some of the women sell their breast milk, extracted by a pump at the clinic and delivered to the commissioning parents. Others agree to be paid to directly breastfeed the baby, despite the likelihood of bonding.

The Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction is planning to challenge the Indian government on the proposed law change. "There are millions of dollars in IVF cycles," says Rana.

At another clinic in eastern Ahmedabad, I meet Dr Amin* in a run-down building hidden between a garage and an electrical goods store. The cluttered office is windowless. Covering the walls are photographs of newborn babies, and thank you cards from the commissioning parents.

Amin hands me some photographs of potential surrogates, while explaining the fees for egg donation - "caucasian donors £2,500 to £3,000, Indian donor £1,000".

The surrogates remain at home during their pregnancy and are monitored daily. "I don't allow the women to live in surrogacy house," says Amin. "The husband is the better watchman I feel. He is involved in the programme - he knows how to take care of his woman. Outside, if she's alone she will have many friends and [it will be] difficult for me to control. Even if I put them in a hostel I never know what is going on there."

I ask if the women ever experience domestic violence during pregnancy.

"Rarely, but we have seen it," says Amin. "Last year we heard a surrogate's husband was beating her. She came crying to us so we put her up. After the child was born we sent her back."

According to Amin, the surrogates she hires are middle class or upper class. "Recently we [hired] three Brahmin [a high caste] girls, all educated. We have about 25% of that class. About 85% [of all surrogates] are quite well off." I suspect this is a lie. Research by pressure group Stop Surrogacy Now shows that, aside from rare cases, it is the poorest women from the lowest castes who become surrogate mothers.

We discuss the recent change in policy, and Amin tells me about a surrogacy clinic in Hyderabad that produced five children for a gay couple from five individual surrogates. Same sex couples have been banned from accessing surrogacy services in India since 2013, but, as one clinician told me: "It is still going on in Delhi and elsewhere, because this is not a regulated industry."

As we are leaving the clinic, Amin points to a photograph on the wall of a white woman holding a brown baby. "She asked for an Indian egg donor." I ask why. Does she have an Indian partner, for example? "No, she wanted a baby with black hair," says Amin, beaming as she takes my 1,500 rupees for the consultation fee and shows me the door.
* N ames have been changed Topics

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Outsourcing pregnancy: a visit to India's surrogacy clinics | Julie Bindel

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Julie Bindel, a strident opponent of surrogacy, travelled to India to find out more about a practice worth an estimated £690m a year on the subcontinent In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, my driver is looking for one of the city's IVF clinics.

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In North and South Kivu, women were kidnaped and raped. Many of them were scared to come foward even after the event for fear of retribution. This was similar to the Handmaids when they had other children or families from before the regime that they had to protect.

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Stefan Kirchner

Despite decades of emancipation and women's liberation, women are and will remain vulnerable due to their gender and their status in society. Wartime rapes are anything but new. Since the earliest days of human warfare, women were often considered to be not more than war booty. So much that Coomaraswamy calls it "an accepted practice of conquering armies". During its war in Eastern and Southeastern Asia, Japan held women from many countries as so called "comfort women", meaning that they were interned and had to be available for the sexual desires of members of Japan's armed forces. This sexual slavery resulted in millions of rapes. Immediately after the fall of Berlin in 1945, Soviet soldiers were given free reign in the city which was mainly populated by women, children and elderly as the male population had been send off to fight Hitler's war, again resulting in an uncounted number of rapes. Earlier, German forces invading the Soviet Union had committed numerous rapes. More recently, rape has been employed not only to terrorize the population but also as weapon of genocide for example in Bosnia, Darfur, Iraq, Rwanda and - to this very day - in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

Often the women are kidnapped while working in the fields or on the way to fetch water, food or firewood. Often kidnappings occur during raids of villages by armed attackers, who often come in groups of two to five. The victims are taken from the villages into the forest where they are held captive and are gang raped for days or months.

Children as victims

The gravity of the situation is highlighted by a UN report on the situation of children in Ituri, North- and South-Kivu, dated 28 June 2007: "Despite all of the initiatives undertaken to counter sexual violence and the adoption of two national laws on sexual violence on 20 July 2006, the number of sexual abuses remains extremely high. Sexual violence has occurred virtually unabated, in a climate of impunity and judicial dysfunction. Although the reported rate of sexual violence remains high, such incidents are un-derreported and accurate statistics are difficult to obtain because of a number of factors, including the fear of ostracism and retribution which prevents survivors from coming forward; the prohibitive distance and lack of access to medical care owing to the prevailing security situation in some areas; a lack of faith in the judicial system; and the local tendency of amicable settlement, whereby the perpetrator pays the victim an agreed upon sum or value in kind. [Between June 2006 and May 2007], 12,867 survivors of sexual violence were identified by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) partners in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Of those survi-vors, 4,222 were children (3,740 girls and 482 boys). Children represent an alarming 33 per cent of survivors of sexual violence. Of 100 survivors in Ituri, 43 were children (of whom approximately 18 per cent were boys). Of the aforementioned 4,222 children, information on the perpetrators is available in only 690 cases; in 29 cases, the perpetrators were members of [the Armed Forces of the D.R.C.] or [Congolese National Police] (4.2 per cent); in 458 cases, they were from armed groups (66 per cent); and in 203 cases, they were civilians (29 per cent)."

The stigma of rape

In some villages, two thirds of all women are thought to have been raped but until recently remaining silent was all that stood between the women and complete disgrace in the eyes of their families and communities. Often the problem runs deeper than the wounds which are visible. Yet, it has become impossible for the women to remain silent and many finally dare to seek medical help. Exact victim numbers, though, are impossible to come by since many women are still prevented from seeking medical help. Often victims will not be able to afford the trip to the nearest hospital or are simply unable to travel due to their health condition. Often traditional taboos force victims to essentially hide in the house. That is, if they are lucky enough to have a family which is decides to allow them to return and which does not force them out of the house. The stigma which is associated with having been raped is particularly strong in the D.R.C.: among the most severely affected victims are the women who become pregnant during the rape because they are burdened with the additional stigma of carrying the enemy's child, making it more likely that they are being abandoned by their families. Consequently they will often have to raise the child without the family support which is vital in traditional societies such as the rural D.R.C. Also many victims will never see a doctor out of shame. Often rape victims will not even be willing to refer to what the crime as rape but as "it" or "what happened" and traditional ideas concerning the status of women in the D.R.C. are a major obstacle to progress.

Involvement of all armed groups in the region

It is not one but many groups in Eastern Congo which commit such crimes. According to Medecins sans frontieres (MSF), "[a]ll armed groups have been involved in the widespread sexual violence. The intent to terrorise, punish, and humiliate communities seen as supportive of the other side made rape a weapon of war. Sexual violence has been so clearly linked to the military strategy of warring parties and has occurred in such a systematic way that it is wrong to think of it as a side effect of war." Different groups have taken to inflict different types of wounds in order to make clear to everyone who was behind the attack: some insert objects, some burn women, some rape 11-14 year old girls, some tie the hands of the victims so tight that they will often have to be amputated, an other group holds the victims in slavery for months and rapes them until they get pregnant for the sole purpose of aborting the child later. The age range is equally shocking: in the Eastern Congolese town of Shabunda, MSF reports that the victims included eleven year old girls as well as grandmothers in their seventies and at Panzi Hospital, doctors have treated patients with rape-caused fistulae between 12 months and 71 years of age.

Widespread occurrence of fistulae caused by rape, insertion of objects

Fistulae can have many different causes, ranging from cervical cancer, lymphogranuloma venereum, coital injury to traditional rituals e.g. in different parts of Africa, including "ritual cleansing" of the vagina through a solution containing potash shortly after the woman has given birth, which can lead to the chemical destruction of the vaginal tissue, to gishiri. The latter is a practice found in the northern parts of West Africa and involves the insertion of a long knife into the vagina in order to make a cut with the aim of widening the vagina, since it is believed that many gynaecologic problems were "caused by a vagina that is too narrow". Fistulae are rarely seen in the developed world these days but in eastern Congo they have become an epidemic, that is - fistulae caused by rape. According to a Newsweek report in November 2006, it is estimated that 250,000 women were raped in that conflict and thousands of them have been injured so severely that they suffer from fistulae. At the time being, though, it is impossible for either the D.R.C. government or outside observers to give accurate victim numbers. Many women here have not only been raped but often gang-raped repeatedly, but "more often the damage is caused by the deliberate introduction of objects into the victim's vagina when the rape itself is over. The objects might be sticks or pipes. Or gun barrels. In many cases the attackers shoot the victim in the vagina at point-blank range after the have finished raping her." Often the perpetrators make sure that they don't kill the victim but inflict as much damage as possible, leaving the victim behind "permanently and obviously marked".

HIV and other sexually transmittable diseases

Given that many perpetrators are HIV positive, HIV/AIDS is rapidly becoming a concern for victims. But while access to Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) is crucial, awareness of the existence of PEP needs to be raised in order to encourage victims to seek help as soon as possible after the rape. Other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are affecting many victims, too. In Matili, MSF staff reported that on their first visit to the village after three or four month, they had to treat all rape victims for STDs, such as salpingitis. But the victims' husbands are also aware of the victims' potential exposure to STDs. This knowledge leads many husbands to reject their wives after they had been raped, because they fear that their wives might transmit STDs to them. Often, though, the rejection will be based on the stigma associated with having been raped rather than the risk of STDs. But even if a rape victim is allowed to return to her house, it is "normal for [the victim's husband] to find a new wife, moving the old one into a different room and ignoring her."

In order to respond adequately, the problem has to be seen from a number of different angles:

Medical and psychiatric assistance

Any medical help therefore needs to include STD treatment, including PEP, but also needs to take into account the psychological needs of the victims, such as treatment for posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD), mood disorders, substance abuse and eating and sexual disorders. In particular trauma counseling will need to be improved: At the time being, as even MSF admits, not enough is being done here: as long as the victim is victimized again by her husband or family, the suffering will continue long after the actual crime has been committed.

In this context the children born out of rape must not be overlooked either. With their mothers often finding themselves in extremely difficult circumstances, there is a danger that these children will be neglected because they are seen as being "the enemy". This issue needs a two-fold approach: counseling for the mother, including if necessary material support on one hand, but also child protection on the other hand.

Access to justice

Equally lacking is the access to justice for the victims: Although thousands of women have been raped, less than a dozen perpetrators had been prosecuted by 2005. Rape and other forms of sexual violence in times of war are prohibited by International Humanitarian Law. These prohibitions can be argued amount even to jus cogens, that is, to rules of international law which take absolute precedence over other rules. In 1999 the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights demanded that all acts of sexual violence be condemned and prosecuted and today wartime rape constitutes a war crime which can be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and which in the past has already been prosecuted for example before the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former Yugoslavia (ICTY): In Akayesu, the ICTR convicted the defendant for rape as a form of genocide, in Delalic, the ICTY held that sexual violence can constitute torture and in Kunarac the defendant was convicted for sexual slavery, rape and violations of human dignity which the ICTY considered war crimes and crimes against humanity, to give just a few examples. In the short term, targeting perpetrators as directly as possible will have the greatest deterring effect. The message that has to be sent must be clear: whoever commits such crimes will be identified, hunted down and brought to justice. Many war criminals actually do not believe that they will be caught. There is a general feeling that one gets away with rape. This illusion has to be shattered. Since the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is unable to take adequate action, it has already asked the ICC to deal with the international criminal law implications of the conflict in the D.R.C. - that is the entire conflict in the D.R.C. of which wartime rapes are just one of many issues. The only case pending at the ICC at the time being in relation to the D.R.C. concerns the recruitment of child soldiers and there is no telling as to when the Court will address the issue of systematic rape in the D.R.C. It would be unrealistic in any case to assume that the ICC will be able to bring justice to all victims. At best it will bring global attention to the problem and send a message that the law also reaches to the D.R.C. Whether that will actually prevent potential rapists from committing future crimes remains to be seen, in particular since the ICC does not have a police force of its own but would have to rely on international troops on the ground. This is not a feasible option because at the time being the international community sees more danger than potential for good in sending more troops to the D.R.C., making the deployment of international forces highly unlikely which in turn will make it extremely difficult if not impossible for the ICC to investigate properly. A criminal justice solution is therefore not likely to be achieved anytime soon, if at all. This also means that there will be es-sentially no deterrent against future rapes and that the problem will continue.

Creating a culture of respect for women

But the key to ensuring both greater access to health care and improving overall support for victims is the same as to protecting women against rape in the first place: the traditional position of women in the D.R.C. (and the problem is essentially the same in many other cultures around the Earth) has to be overcome. This is certainly not "culturally sensitive", but it is a fundamental respect for women which is lacking here. It is necessary to create a culture of respect for women and girls. This might take generations and many obstacles will have to be overcome, such as ethnic of religious taboos and views concerning the position of women in society and in particular the relation between men and women, or low levels of education in most fundamental ethical issues. Such changes, though, cannot be imposed top down but have to start with each individual. The state, the international community or any outsider for that matter, can only help by giving impulses and by assisting in creating a favorable environment which includes better education opportunities for both genders. The dissemination work of the Red Cross could play an important role here, as well as work by religious and other groups. But the key to protecting women hold those who have the greatest impact on the perpetrators: other men. By treating women with respect in everyday life and by setting examples to their children and indeed everyone else around them, it is men who have to set the standard as to how to treat women. Respect is the key to preventing future atroci-ties against women - in fact, against our wives, sisters, mothers and daughters.

Despite the peace agreement which officially ended the war in the D.R.C., massive and systematic rapes continue in the war-torn nation in the heart of Africa. In fact, rape has become a weapon of terror directed against the civilian population in the Eastern D.R.C. and all armed groups are thought to be involved. Often rape in the D.R.C. takes particularly violent forms, leading to injuries such as fistulae. The high prevalence of HIV and other STDs among perpetrators adds to the risks the victims are facing. In particular psychological support needs to be improved as does access to any form of medical help: although there has been some improvement, traditional taboos continue to prevent many women from seeking help and the stigma associated with having been raped places victims in danger long after the crime has been committed. Given that it is highly unlikely that justice can be done for all victims and there is no effective deterrent against systematic rape, the position of women in the D.R.C. has to be strengthened considerably. The creation of a culture of respect for women, though, will take generations rather than years.

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Hell on Earth - Systematic Rape in Eastern Congo

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Stefan Kirchner Despite decades of emancipation and women's liberation, women are and will remain vulnerable due to their gender and their status in society. Wartime rapes are anything but new. Since the earliest days of human warfare, women were often considered to be not more than war booty.

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A woman smuggled a surrogate from Mexico. However, when she was not of use to her as a surrogate she forced her into labor like the women sent to the colonies. Also instead of being fed and treated well she was starved.

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In India they take girls from their home and make them sign a contract that they don’t understand. Then they take them to a house where they inseminate them without their knowledge and keep them there. By the time they realize that they’re pregnant it’s too late for them to abort. If they try to run away they’re found and beaten. Also if they try to go against this or cause too much trouble something bad will happen to them. Thus leading to them being in the same situation as the handmaids. Both of them are being forced to carry babies to survive.

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There's something almost eerily Nazi about this. Not in terms of formal politics, of course. Only ordinary people are involved here. But their actions speak of a rarefied universe of cruelty-elevated to an organised, clinical, coldly amoral enterprise. At the heart of it is the idea that one can exert absolute control over another's body. The terms of abuse go beyond even sadism; the human body here is just a device and also its product. The stories offer no great cause for optimism, but avoiding the dark dramas, and pretending they don't exist, is precisely what allows them to grow.

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The first story. We'll call her Soni, as many of them are indeed called-an adivasi name that contains resonances. She is at an undisclosed location in Bihar at present, in hiding, fearing for her life, recuperating from the injuries to her soul. She breaks down often over the phone as she narrates her story. Of how she came to Delhi as a minor and, in stages, passed through a dark mirror-to enter an unreal world of slavery that awaited on the other side, a tiny house, where unknown men set in motion a whole cycle of sowing and harvesting on her body. And that of other girls like her.

As the story starts, life looked cheerless but sufficiently normal. Soni was 15 in 2010 when she, along with four friends, moved out from her village in Jharkhand, joining the tide of humankind flowing out from that immiserated state. Volitional, but only to a degree. For there was an agent, as always, and then a sale and transfer of ownership to an agency, and then the drudgery of housework in a typical Delhi home. She lost track of her friends. Six months on, a man came to see Soni, and said he was from the "office". He said nothing else-just saw her and left. Days later, another agent came, took her along to a new house. The people at the first house were nice, relatively. They slipped her Rs 10,000, which she concealed in her salwar.

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The new house was tiny and surrounded by narrow lanes. Soni was made to sign papers she couldn't read, something written in English. Then a strange routine started-regular check-ups at a hospital, blood tests and, most importantly, strange injections. She didn't understand why she needed them. There were other girls at the house, all secluded. The curtains were always firmly drawn. There were guards, agents, staff members and a caretaker, a woman from Jharkhand she called 'didi'. The rhythms of life seemed regular-sleeping, waking, cleaning, eating. "I would want fish and they would get me fish. Nobody refused me anything. They were nice to me, I didn't know why," she says.

"Girls who get pregnant, their children are kept in the agency office and sold after they are around one year old," Rashmi said, recounting what she saw in Delhi.

One day a girl whispered to Soni in the bathroom that a baby was growing inside her. She had never heard the English word "baby", so she didn't catch on. "I just didn't have the brains to know what was happening. I was 15 or 16," she says. After three months of regular hospital visits-always in a curtained vehicle-Soni was taken for an ultrasound. "Back home, I pestered the caretaker, 'Kya hai didi, dikhaiye na, dikhaiye na'. And she showed me. There was a photo of a very small child-ekdum chhota sa bachcha tha."

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It was like a pane of glass getting shattered inside her. The news would have come as a profound shock to any woman, but it was natural for a girl her age and level of emotional maturity to be thrown totally off-kilter. The coldness of the system relies on their naivete-underage girls are especially vulnerable to this exploitation because, by the time they realise they are pregnant, it's often too late for abortion. Soni managed to stay on her feet, though. The caretaker told her to win the confidence of those running the house. She found enough steel inside her to play along, hoping to run away one day. She stayed in the house for another three months-in all, around six. They took her for walks at a local park or to buy vegetables. "Other girls would run away to try and abort the child but they were caught, brought back and beaten. I used to get scared but kept quiet, as if I was fine," she says. Slowly she won their trust and one night she slipped out at 3 am. Where she went, how she went, is a blur. She asked a taxi driver, "Bhaiya humko station chhod dijiye-please take me to the station". Using some of the Rs 10,000, she finally escaped the city with that grey moral smog hanging over it, and reached Ranchi.

Back in her village, still pregnant, Soni wandered alone in the forest, trying repeatedly to kill herself. By hanging, by pouring kerosene...but always survived. "I knew there was a child inside me but didn't know how to tell anybody, how to explain how it happened," she says. Girls in her situation, Soni realised later, often end their lives-as a friend of hers did recently. In her own case, a male friend finally arranged a doctor. An abortion ensued, at almost four months.

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The village was where it started. Soni recalls, through tears, leaving her mother crying at the bus stand, asking her not to leave for Delhi. "I didn't listen-meri zidd thi-I was set upon going. The agent was from my village so I believed him," she says. Her father had filed an FIR when he found her gone, but there was no police investigation. Now she registered a case, and promptly started getting threats to her life. "The agents tore up my FIR and threw it away," she says. She did not mention the pregnancy in the FIR. "My FIR was only about agents selling girls for Rs 40,000-50,000 but the police didn't probe even this. Nobody supported me," she says.

"If the pregnant woman returns home, agents try all means to take her baby. If she stays back, the agency keeps the child anyway," says activist Baidnath.

From a sense of sheer isolation, a sense of community began growing in her. The pattern started sinking in. Soni met another girl from Jharkhand who told her of having given birth six times, until her body gave way. "She got Rs 50,000 per child. It is such a sad thing. I believe her. Nobody can live with a lie this big. I cry so much. Why did this happen to me? Why does it happen to unmarried girls? I didn't love anybody, had no friend. Why does god do this to us-how have we ever harmed anybody?" Depleted of her inner resources of vitality, it was a slow recovery-and a vague apprehension about the future kept Soni silent in public. "Tell the police? What will they do? They will only ridicule me and I'll never be able to marry. My parents will be defamed, that's all. What choice do I have? What can anybody do for me?"

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The second story has overlaps with the first-the same points on the physical and social map-but this time it's an eye-witness. Her account helps us map out the territory from the outside, as it were. Rashmi is only about 20 but solemn-faced, as if the weight of years has worn her down slightly. She was all of 13 when the system smoked her out of her village home up on the Simdega plateau in southern Jharkhand, bordering Orissa. One day in September 2014, Rashmi escaped from seven years of domestic slavery. The placement agent who had lured her to that city back in 2008, put her on a train back to Ranchi. Rashmi travelled another 100 km by bus, crossing jungle and river to reach familial territory. A house in the town of Gumla. Her own people at last.

It was the house of her sister and brother-in-law. Soon after, the two of them accompanied Rashmi to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) office in Gumla. Yes, it was a child's story-a tale about the lost years of childhood-that she had to relate. The CWC is the only government body authorised to hear and record such testimonies. But its officers were away that day. "Our team was attending a UNICEF function in Ranchi that day so we didn't meet Soni," says Targen Panna, CWC's Gumla chairperson at the time. Nice touch that...UNICEF. Anyway, outside the CWC campus, Rashmi bumped into news reporters and activists. One of them brought her to Shashi Kant, an anti-trafficking activist who heads an organisation of his Chik Baraik tribe and is a journalist for a district paper. In the nondescript, white-walled courtyard of his house, Rashmi recorded, on videotape, what she had witnessed in Delhi.

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"Bachcha bechne waala kaam," she called it. Baby-selling. A racket that's evolved in the shadow-zones of modern life to cater to demand. Or rather, many demands. For, baby-selling is only the last link in the chain. Baby production is a necessary interim stage. The laws of the market dictate that supply will rise up to meet demand. And that latter is a primordial word that can encompass many meanings. To reveal the full variety of exploitative practices, throw in a form of slavery. The video conversation with Rashmi, roughly five minutes long, is one of the rare testimonies of what was always suspected happens in Jharkhand but has not been acknowledged so starkly-adivasi girls are trafficked, then raped, compelled to conceive, and finally their children sold in the flourishing adoption black market. A whole assembly-line of organised cruelty.

The price of a child secured through forced conception ranges between Rs 1-4 lakh, say activists. Besides the desperation of those seeking a child, the fluctuation is on account of the money the agents invest in adivasi women and the risk and problems encountered to have them conceive-the cold chain logistics, essentially. The commodification of the human body is abject, merciless and complete. In this economy, the adivasi woman and her womb are turned into money-making devices.

When reports about Rashmi were splashed in the papers, it was initially assumed she was a victim too. One news report talked of a "rescued girl who had had six babies". Another said she had been asked, and she refused. Indeed, some tell-tale signs fit the pattern, but Rashmi herself denies it. Anyway, all the buzz spurred the CWC into action-but even then, not much of it. "We didn't visit her village but we kept ask-ing her to come to us. Rashmi never responded," says Panna. "Tell me-you are a victim, you have a problem, shouldn't you at least tell us about it? She is also over 18, so what could we do? Yes, even if such a crime occurred, she should have come to us."

In a tangential way, the episode cuts to the nub of why this phenomenon is hard to track down, let alone establish. The traumatised women often don't want to talk-and for a variety of understandable reasons. Victims feel vulnerable in surroundings alien to them-and revisiting rape in front of strangers can be akin to a second violation. Two, they may simply not want the fact of rape or pregnancy disclosed. The stigma is overpowering, and thoughts can turn to mere survival. A testimony such as Rashmi's, therefore, is valuable in the extreme, and likely reveals just the tip of the iceberg.

But in contrast to the lackadaisical CWC, Shakti Vahini, an NGO, sent a fact-finding team to meet Rashmi at her home. "We heard of a rescued girl going to her village and telling people she was forced to have a child in Delhi so we went to meet her," says Rishikant, who runs Shakti Vahini. He and Baidnath, a Ranchi-based activist who was also in the fact-finding team, pieced together Rashmi's story and the NGO later publicised the facts in a report. The essential elements go thus:

An agent named Chayin Singh delivered Rashmi to Delhi. Not to any ordinary placement agency but to the Moti Nagar office of Manpower Bureau, run by Naina Kumari, allegedly one of Jharkhand's three most notorious traffickers. Whenever she visited that office, one thing struck her as odd: the number of babies and pregnant women. On one such visit, she met four girls, two of them pregnant, who explained things to her. As Rashmi recounted even in her video, "Girls who get pregnant, their children are kept in the agency office and sold after they are around one year old."

From here on, the trail goes hazy. As Rishikant admits, "We could not verify her claims." The NGO recommended an official investigation, which never took place. Trouble is, the complaint Rashmi later filed with the police (FIR No 08/15) in Basia, near Gumla, also does not mention the allegation she made before the media, activists and the fact-finding team. "Rashmi's case is only about recovering dues under labour laws and accuses Chayin Singh and Naina Kumari with trafficking and keeping bonded labour," says an officer who investigated the case. Naina, of course, denies involvement and claims a witch-hunt. "Some journalists and the CWC coerced three girls to give statements against me, but they backed out before the SP," she says.

How does one square these blurred circles? "The police should have investigated the allegations when she first made them. We keep hearing of such cases but the victims are poor tribal girls. They recant under pressure from agents," says Shashi Kant. It seems too coincidental that Rashmi's actual testimonial reached everybody's ears except the CWC and the police. At any rate, there's a pattern in the testimonials-an initial burst of candour, then reticence, even retractions.

Similar graph was marked out when, three months after Rashmi, another woman, Vinati Bhuiya, approached the Basia police's AHTU (Anti Human Trafficking Unit) and also complained before the CWC. Her daughters, aged 15 and 17, had gone to Delhi in October 2013 with an agent and her older daughter, Mamta, was forcibly impregnated, she said. "The mother told us this in a written complaint, filed before me," says Alakh Narayan Singh, then a CWC member. "She wanted her daughters returned but her allegations were not confirmed," says Panna.

Strangely enough, the CWC soon received a letter signed by the two girls saying they were well and the rumours about pregnancy were untrue. "Two barely educated girls could not have written such a long, articulate letter. We demanded they be produced before us and then the girls returned," says Panna. Alakh Narayan says the agency wields inordinate power over the girls-"they were simply afraid to speak".

The FIR (No. 38/15, May 6, 2015) once again omitted the most serious charges. Instead, Vinati only charged the agent, Anita Devi-also related to Manpower Bureau-of "spreading a rumour in the village that her daughter is pregnant." Anita, her husband and son were chargesheeted, the police say, on December 27, 2015, for keeping bonded labour and trafficking-charges softer than rape and impregnation of minors. The case is still on trial.

After the FIR, Vinati's daughters returned to Basia (through an agent), visited the police station and were taken to the SP's office in Gumla. "I myself took the girl (Mamta) to the SP's office. After the mother's allegations of pregnancy appeared in the news, the DG, IG, everybody took notice. But the girl denied being forced to have children," says a police officer.

The flurry of attention did not escape Naina Kumari either. It was three months after Rashmi's FIR that Vinati's daughters were sent back home from Delhi-another sign that she too could have been a victim. "Naina became afraid after the FIR," says Alakh Narayan. In September 2016, she came down to the CWC office in Gumla straight from a court appearance. "She created a ruckus. She accused us of harassing girls, of pressurising them to make statements against her," recounts Alakh Narayan. "Naina is very dabang-bold. She's young and looks innocent but don't be fooled; she can kick up a storm, trick anybody."

It was clear that the FIR had had its effect-but the crucial gap in incrimination remained. Without a high-level inquiry into placement agencies, the sheer enormity of the phenomenon escaped notice. Meanwhile, the driblets of information kept coming. Other girls have returned pregnant to Jharkhand. Some had their children taken away at birth. All stories have the same depressing arc.

On April 27, Baba Bamdev Ram got 10 years from a Delhi court, which found him guilty of raping minors, among other serious crimes.

Photograph by Rajesh Kumar

It was in 2010 that Ritu, all of 15 then, left Latehar's Mahuwatand village with agent Savita. Deposited at 'Kapil Dev Chaudhary' Placement Agency in Punjabi Bagh, Delhi, she worked without pay for almost three years. She then approached Baba Bamdev Ram, a self-styled godman from Jharkhand, for help with recovering wages. He took Rs 1,500 from Ritu and promised help, which never came. Ritu didn't know, as she says in her police complaint, that Bamdev co-owned the agency that owed her money. In fact, Bamdev was the flamboyant overlord of Jharkhand's placement industry those days. He actively participated in a Christmas-eve jamboree held every year in Delhi to which adivasi domestic helps were invited. Food and drink, peppered with speeches by him and Jharkhand's other placement magnates such as Pannalal Mahto, were the usual menu.

In an FIR she filed in 2013 in Ranchi, Ritu accused one Lallan Pandit, who she described as an agent of 'Kapil Dev Chaudhary', of rape and illegal confinement-also alluding to the money Bamdev took. After legal proceedings started, she returned to Mahuwatand, pregnant. Her brother refused to let her in. A Ranchi NGO called Diya Sewa Sansthan intervened, securing her a job serving tea at the SP's office in Latehar and helping her pursue the case.

Ritu's child was born that year..."but vanished right after birth," says Sita Swansi, who runs Diya. "By then, the rape accused was out on bail too. A case, then, where the victim made bold to approach the law, but met the same fate. Her baby was sold off and she withdrew the rape case too."

Baidnath, who was at the time with Diya and had assisted Ritu, says: "This happens every time. If the pregnant woman returns, agents use financial or muscle power to take her baby. If she stays back in the city, the agency keeps the child anyway. The girls have no choice but to compromise." The NGO got custody over Ritu but Sita rues her inability to track down most victims. "We have simply no way to do it. The girls keep moving in search of work. Their families are never in one place."

Stray successes punctuate the gloom. On April 27 this year, Bamdev got 10 years from a Delhi court, which found him guilty of raping minors and other serious crimes. "Ritu's was one of the cases that contributed to the groundswell of charges against him," says Swansi. But where there's an established market, the individual players are dispensable; others take their place. In all stories, there are common threads: of women reporting love-trap, conspiracy, betrayal, confinement, rape, pregnancy, escape, abandonment and, ultimately, the loss of a child. This is so prevalent that Jharkhand police have a phrase for it-"forced surrogacy". Yet, only a few victims-perhaps two or three-have ever registered cases that mention specifics. And these mostly pass unnoticed.

The broad economic asymmetry under which all this happens is well known. "Girls are trafficked from Jharkhand largely to feed the demand for domestic workers in big cities," says Sampat Meena, who heads Jharkhand's AHTU. Adults are of course free to work where they please but that's no guarantee against sexual exploitation. "We do get such cases," concedes Meena. "Most of them are against agents who initially promise girls high-paid jobs but later take advantage of them." And then that disclaimer. "We have not got cases of agents forcing women to conceive children for sale." A similar tamped-down version is what Hazaribagh DIG Bhimsen Tuti has to offer. He was SP, Gumla, when the Rashmi case came to light. "I questioned the girl in person, hers was just a hearsay version-she was not a victim. It could not be substantiated. We didn't have any other clue or hint to follow so the matter was dropped."

But a different kind of corroboration comes from Sister Mamta, a missionary from Jashpur in Chhattisgarh, not far from Gumla. "Girls do get pregnant and come back to the village. She keeps the child with her-what else will she do? Sometimes she gives the child away, or it goes to an orphanage. Villagers create problems...they rarely accept the child because she has brought it from outside."

Ajeeta, who escaped from a Delhi placement agency this March and filed a rape case, said "the agency had offered her money to become a 'surrogate' mother".

Yet, one such case surfaced recently in Delhi. With details that can curdle the blood. Two women escaped from a Delhi placement agency just this March. Something called Arti Enterprises, in the urban desolation of northwest Delhi. The agency owners, a Simdega couple named Arti Ekka and Baburaj, accidentally left a door ajar, and the two slipped out-a woman from Bengal and a Jharkhandi named Ajeeta, from a village near Kurdeg in Simdega. They sought out a social worker who called the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), and the group went to file an FIR at Nihal Vihar.

News reports said Arti and Baburaj had illegally confined Ajeeta, the Bengali woman and four others who had been raped and made pregnant. Ajeeta told the police "the agency had offered her money to become a 'surrogate' mother. She has filed a case of rape," says Nihal Vihar SHO Sarath Chandra. But, but, but. "We went and interviewed the other girls. They all said they're perfectly happy. They are all adults. How could we check if they are pregnant, on what ground?"

Just before dawn on March 23, the police got cracking and arrested Arti Ekka for illegal confinement. But she got bail the same day. Rape accused Mahali, Baburaj and agent Virender Sahu (who Ajeeta said had brought her to Delhi) absconded. Then again, the usual equivocation. "We differ with the DCW on this. There was no raid, no rescue. None of the women were minors. None had complaints. It wasn't a raid but a routine investigation," says Pankaj Kumar Singh, a DCP rank officer in Outer Delhi who monitored events that night.

Two different kinds of voices subvert that. One comes from Swati Maliwal, DCW chairperson. "If the police and DCW go without warning, on the basis of a complaint, and arrest someone at the crack of dawn, is that not a raid?" she asks. "Whatever it is, the charge of forcible impregnation needs thorough investigation. The police should not assume it is a case of forcible pregnancy-but they should also not assume it is not."

The other comes, strangely, from DCP (Outer) M.N. Tiwari, with a chilling piece of information. "During investigations, Ajeeta revealed that the agent Mahali kept track of her monthly period. That he would tell her, 'I will make you a child-bearing machine.' But so far, we only know this as a case of rape. We are concerned with the charge of rape, in which we have an accused. Now she (Ajeeta) should be more clear to us, so that we can catch the person." Yes, a rape, in which the rapist is keeping track of the victim's periods.

Official reluctance creates grey zones where they may be none. True, "surrogacy" is not mentioned in Ajeeta's FIR. Police officials declined a copy of the FIR citing 'sensitivity'. Outlook nevertheless secured a copy of it. It says: "The placement agency owner Baburaj told me I have only one job in Delhi, which is to have a child. Then Baburaj asked agent Baratu Mahali to rape me. Mahali did rape me, on 6 and 7 March 2017 and now I fear I am pregnant."

Ajeeta came to Delhi seeking work but never got placed. Arti, who has since disbanded her agency, spoke to Outlook on the phone from her village in Simdega. Her words are dry, and seek to put a cap on her crisis, but they confirm the deep cynicism. "Who would want a 30-35-year-old like Ajeeta, who has three children of her own, to bear children, that too forcibly," she asks. She says all the girls who were living with her in Delhi have left. "I have left Delhi too."

Ajeeta has been lodged at the Nari Niketan in Delhi's Tihar complex since March 23. There's a ring of virtual barbed wire around her. No channel opens up access to her. Her sister Vineeta tried twice to meet her, in vain. "I don't know much about what happened. My sister injured her hand in a fire long back. She only has two fingers in one hand," says Vineeta, seeking to make light of everything. But the implications stare at you in the face. "At last we have an actual FIR in a matter concerning trafficking girls from Jharkhand for children. I think if the police investigate it properly, this case can open a Pandora's Box," says Rishikant.

But with the police still coy about joining the dots, it's a tough, lonely battle-especially for the victims. There's no activist, no media, at the moment of their desolation. Rape is regularly used as a weapon to threaten and subdue tribal women and their families, and that naturally dampens feelings for justice. Even when, in the uncrowded landscape of a village, things are not hard to pin down.

On August 1, 2016, 12-year-old Rani disappeared from village Pantha. "Shobha and Mamta sold my daughter in Delhi," says Sanju Lohra, Rani's father. The two he names are residents of a nearby village. Shobha would propose the idea of taking young Rani to Delhi often. Lohra always refused. But he lived and worked in Ranchi, and meanwhile the girl grew close to Shobha. "I wanted to go to the police right after Rani left but Shobha threatened me that she will have Rani raped and never be able to return," he says. Last month Lohra picked up courage and registered an FIR. The Pantha police kept Shobha in custody for 24 hours, then let her go. "Shobha accepted at the thana that she will bring my daughter back. So she knows where Rani is. But the police let her go and now I don't know who to turn to," says Lohra. "They haven't let me speak to Rani since August."

Jharkhand has two varieties of placement agents, 'local' and 'national'. The 'national' type-Baba Bamdev, Pannalal Mahto or Naina Kumari-emerges after a long climb up from 'local' or intra-state placement. But the lesser agents wreak no less damage. Arti Kachap would know. A native of Itki, near Ranchi, she was married to a brick kiln worker who left town. Four years ago, she moved to Ranchi with Raju Munda. Munda and his father, Arti says, first put her to work in a Varanasi construction site. Thereafter, they returned to Ranchi where both raped her and confined her to a dark room when she was pregnant-twice over roughly four years.

"They sold my son Ashu for Rs 40,000," says Arti, who was beaten up when she resisted the next child's sale, leaving her invalid waist down.

One of the children born this way went to a Punjabi businessman. "They sold my son Ashu for Rs 40,000," she says. When Arti resisted the next child's sale, the father-son duo beat her, leaving her invalid waist down. In what must count as the most cuttingly direct allegories, she started begging at the court premises, dragging herself on a sackcloth and pleading to lawyers for help. A lawyer, Chandni Srivastava, helped recover the sold child with police assistance and set Arti up as a vegetable-seller. Before the police, Mahto claimed he is Arti's husband, which she denies. Ashu went into an adoption agency for over a year and, on March 28 this year, Chandni took him in. "I meet my son on weekends. I can't care for him as I'm invalid-Munda lives nearby, he'd snatch him again," she says.

"Their methods are getting worse," says Baidnath about the baby mafia. He helped rescue a child recently, one sold off by his own destitute mother on a Rs 20 stamp paper. "I remember rescuing the baby, the only such case we got at the time," says Jaya Roy, former SP, Ranchi. But the activist is livid at how far back the law is. "The police and government are in fact proving ineffective. They fail to see the connection between adoption, slavery and placement," he says.

The grinding wheels of this economy are too huge; they dehumanise everyone, and there's no easy separation of victim and aggressor. This April, Baidnath came across the case of Pratima, a 25-year-old widow, trafficked to Rajasthan from Ranchi by her own younger sister, Renu. The family found out that Pratima went to a man in Neem Ka Thana in Rajasthan's Sikar district, and Rs 60,000 was paid to her sister. "Renu works in Jaipur. We didn't know what she does. She visited us in March and took Pratima away saying it was for a few days' holiday," says Pratima's sister-in-law Bharti, who has registered a case with the AHTU.

The family collected donations from neighbours to go looking for Pratima, a widow with three children, after they received a desperate call for help from her. "We are in Rajasthan to look for Pratima. We paid for a Bolero taxi and the Rajasthan police sent a policeman with us. They located her. We were shocked to find Pratima dressed in Rajasthani clothes. The moment we reached we were surrounded by a group of men. Our police escort said Pratima cannot return with us because these men are too powerful," says Nirmala, Bharti's mother. "As we left, terrified, Pratima begged us to save her or she would die."

"The agent would tell Ajeeta, 'I will make you a child-bearing machine.' But so far, we only know this as a case of rape," says DCP M.N. Tiwari.

On the other side, Shravan a.k.a. Sonaram Gujjar says he has actually married Pratima. "It is the girl's family that took money from me, to meet wedding expenses. Pratima is perfectly happy here," he says. He refused to put Pratima on the phone. "I'm not at home for ten days so you can try later." He says he is away for work, cooking sweets at weddings before he returns home to his fields. "That part of Rajasthan is infamous for trafficking," says Baidnath. "The woman will be kept and her children sooner or later abandoned or sold."

Rashmi called back after several days of trying different numbers. She works in Delhi now, and stands by what she said in the video. "I didn't just see it once. Many times the agents were bringing in pregnant women. I saw one girl come to the agency and leave her child behind. I saw girls coming there to have the child." Eventually she fell silent, as did Soni about her experience. "Even years later, I haven't told anybody. This is the first time I am speaking out," Soni says. She now wants to set up an office in Jharkhand to help fight trafficking. She has already helped a few-but always in secret, for she herself lives in fear. "People ask me what happened in Delhi, why I get so angry-I tell them nothing. My anger goes out of control when I think my life has been ruined."

Soni sits alone in her room and cries. Even for unknown girls she sheds tears, wondering about what they will go through. "I don't want to talk about it," she says. When you keep something from your family, from everybody, you can only try to run forever, for what you are running from is inside you.
(All names changed to protect identities.) By Pragya Singh in New Delhi & Ranchi

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There's something almost eerily Nazi about this. Not in terms of formal politics, of course. Only ­ordinary people are involved here. But their actions speak of a rarefied universe of cruelty-­elevated to an organised, clinical, coldly amoral enterprise. At the heart of it is the idea that one can ­exert ­absolute control over anot­her's body.

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Anywhere From 12,000 to 50,000 women were raped during this war.  The bosnian serb forces committed most of the rapes to support their goal of ethnic cleansing and create more Bosnians. The handmaids tale has its own version of ethnic cleansing as only whites are allowed in Gilead, allowing for only white babies to be born.

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Violence assumed a gender-targeted form through the use of rape during the Bosnian War. While men from all ethnic groups committed rape, the great majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used genocidal rape as an instrument of terror as part of their programme of ethnic cleansing.

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ISIS escapees describe systematic rape in Iraq

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ISIS escapees describe systematic rape in Iraq

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In Iraq, they would take any female adolescents and move them to a seperate area within the country, where they would be raped and then sold or forced into marriage. Many of these girls  were also forced to convert. This is similar to the Handmaids in that they were separated from their families and kept alongside other female adolescents where they would be taught how to act while awaiting their signing to different Commanders.

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(New York) - The extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) has carried out systematic rape and other sexual violence against Yezidi women and girls in northern Iraq. Human Rights Watch conducted research in the town of Dohuk in January and February 2015, including interviewing 20 women and girls who escaped from ISIS, and reviewing ISIS statements about the subject.

Human Rights Watch documented a system of organized rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by ISIS forces. Such acts are war crimes and may be crimes against humanity. Many of the women and girls remain missing, but the survivors now in Iraqi Kurdistan need psychosocial support and other assistance.

"ISIS forces have committed organized rape, sexual assault, and other horrific crimes against Yezidi women and girls," said Liesl Gerntholtz, women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "Those fortunate enough to have escaped need to be treated for the unimaginable trauma they endured."
Researcher Interview: These Yezidi girls escaped ISIS. Now what?
ISIS forces took several thousand Yezidi civilians into custody in northern Iraq's Nineveh province in August 2014, according to Kurdistan officials and community leaders. Witnesses said that fighters systematically separated young women and adolescent girls from their families and other captives and moved them from one location to another inside Iraq and Syria.

The 11 women and 9 girls Human Rights Watch interviewed had escaped between September 2014 and January 2015. Half, including two 12-year-old girls, said they had been raped - some multiple times and by several ISIS fighters. Nearly all of them said they had been forced into marriage; sold, in some cases a number of times; or given as "gifts." The women and girls also witnessed other captives being abused.

Human Rights Watch also interviewed more than a dozen international and local service providers, medical workers, Kurdish officials, community leaders, and activists who corroborated these accounts. A local doctor treating female survivors in Dohuk told Human Rights Watch that of the 105 women and girls she had examined, 70 appeared to have been raped in ISIS captivity.

All of the women and girls interviewed exhibited signs of acute emotional distress. Many remain separated from relatives and sometimes their entire families, who were either killed by ISIS or remain in ISIS captivity. Several said they had attempted suicide during their captivity or witnessed suicide attempts to avoid rape, forced marriage, or forced religious conversion.

In October 2014, ISIS acknowledged in its publication Dabiq that its fighters had given captured Yezidi women and girls to its fighters as "spoils of war." ISIS has sought to justify sexual violence claiming that Islam permits sex with non-Muslim "slaves," including girls, as well as beating and selling them. The statements are further evidence of a widespread practice and a systematic plan of action by ISIS, Human Rights Watch said.

ISIS commanders should immediately release all civilian detainees, reunite children with their families, and end forced marriages and religious conversions, Human Rights Watch said. They should take all necessary action to end rape and other sexual violence by ISIS fighters. International and local actors who have influence with ISIS should press the group to take these actions.

In 2014 the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) absorbed more than 637,000 displaced people from Nineveh province alone, and made significant efforts to provide health and other services to Yezidi women and girls who have escaped ISIS. However, there have been flaws and gaps in health care, Human Rights Watch said. Some of those interviewed said they underwent medical tests but did not know the purpose and were never told the results.

The director general for health in Dohuk told Human Rights Watch that local authorities had identified fewer than 150 women and girls who had escaped from ISIS and that only about 100 had received medical treatment. According to the KRG Directorate of Yezidi Affairs, 974 Yezidis had escaped ISIS as of March 15, 2015, including 513 women and 304 children.

The women and girls need trauma support and ongoing counselling, Human Rights Watch said. Not all had immediate access to treatment for injuries; emergency contraception; safe and legal abortion services, including sexual and reproductive health access; and psychosocial support.

KRG authorities should try to close gaps in medical care and psychosocial support for the Yezidi girls and women and ensure that doctors provide survivors with results of tests they undergo and information on the services available to them, Human Rights Watch said. The KRG should also develop a plan to assist children born from rape to ensure adequate services and protection for them and their mothers. In addition, the KRG should invest in employment skills training and livelihood schemes to help reintegrate women into daily life.

"Yezidi women and girls who escaped ISIS still face enormous challenges and continuing trauma from their experience," Gerntholtz said. "They need urgent help and support to recover their health and move on with their lives."
ISIS Violations of International Law Abduction and Detention
Since ISIS attacks in and around Sinjar began on August 3, 2014, more than 736,000 Iraqis, primarily Yezidis and other religious minorities, fled their homes in Nineveh province, most to the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, according to the International Organization for Migration. ISIS fighters executed hundreds of male Yezidi civilians and then abducted their relatives, the United Nations and local and international human rights organizations reported. A recent UN report stated that further investigation is needed to establish the number of those held captive or killed by ISIS, which is "estimated to be in the thousands."

Although several hundred Yezidis have since escaped, according to KRG officials, many are still in captivity in various parts of Iraq and Syria. Escaped abductees that Human Rights Watch interviewed said ISIS is holding Yezidis in multiple locations across northern Iraq, including Mosul, Tal Afar, Tal Banat, Ba'aj, Rambusi, and Sinjar, and in areas it controls in eastern Syria, including Raqqa and Rabi'a. They said that ISIS is holding female captives, including girls, in houses, hotels, factories, farm compounds, schools, prisons, military bases, and former government offices.

Young women and girls told Human Rights Watch that ISIS fighters first separated them from men and boys and older women. The fighters moved the women and girls several times in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria. While most of the ISIS fighters appeared to be Syrian or Iraqi, survivors said that some of their abusers told them that they came from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including from Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as from Europe and Central Asia.

The precise number of Yezidis still captive is unknown because of continuing fighting in Iraq and Syria and because significant numbers of Yezidis fled to areas across Iraq and neighboring countries when ISIS attacked. On March 13, 2015, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated in its report that about 3,000 people, mainly Yezidis, allegedly remain in ISIS captivity. Local officials, service providers, and community activists estimate that the number of Yezidis still held is much higher.

In September 2014, a Yezidi group provided Human Rights Watch with a database with 3,133 names and ages of Yezidis they said ISIS had kidnapped or killed, or who had been missing since the ISIS assaults of early August. The database was based on interviews with displaced Yezidis in Iraqi Kurdistan. The group said that as of late March 2015, the number of dead, abducted, and missing Yezidis had risen to 5,324.
Sexual Violence and Other Abuse
The women and girls who spoke to Human Rights Watch described repeated rape, sexual violence, and other abuse in ISIS captivity.

Jalila (all survivors' names have been changed for their security), age 12, said that Arab men whom she recognized from her village north of Sinjar accosted her and seven family members on August 3, 2014, as they were trying to flee ISIS. The men handed the family over to ISIS fighters, who separated Jalila, her sister, sister-in-law, and infant nephew from the other family members and took them to Tal Afar. Later, the fighters took Jalila and her sister to Mosul. Thirty-five days later they separated Jalila from her sister and took her to a house in Syria that housed other abducted young Yezidi women and girls. Jalila said:

The men would come and select us. When they came, they would tell us to stand up and then examine our bodies. They would tell us to show our hair and sometimes they beat the girls if they refused. They wore dishdashas [ankle length garments], and had long beards and hair.

She said that the ISIS fighter who selected her slapped her and dragged her out of the house when she resisted. "I told him not to touch me and begged him to let me go," she said. "I told him to take me to my mother. I was a young girl, and I asked him, 'What do you want from me?' He spent three days having sex with me."

Jalila said that during her captivity, seven ISIS fighters "owned" her, and four raped her on multiple occasions: "Sometimes I was sold. Sometimes I was given as a gift. The last man was the most abusive; he used to tie my hands and legs."

Another 12-year-old, Wafa, told Human Rights Watch that in August ISIS fighters abducted her with her family from the village of Kocho. The men took the family to a school in Tal Afar filled with other Yezidi captives, where the fighters separated her from her family. From there they took her to several locations within Iraq and then to Raqqa, in Syria. An older fighter assured Wafa that she would not be harmed but he repeatedly raped her nevertheless, she said.

"He was sleeping in the same place with me and told me not be afraid because I was like his daughter," she said. "One day I woke up and my legs were covered in blood." Wafa escaped three months after her abduction, but her parents, three brothers, and sister are still missing.

The women and girls who said that they had not been raped said they endured constant stress and anxiety when witnessing the suffering of other women, fearing they would be next.

Dilara, 20, said ISIS fighters took her to a wedding hall in Syria, where she saw about 60 other Yezidi female captives. ISIS fighters told the group to "forget about your relatives, from now on you will marry us, bear our children, God will convert you to Islam and you will pray." She told Human Rights Watch she lived in constant fear that she would be dragged away like so many women and girls before her:

From 9:30 in the morning, men would come to buy girls to rape them. I saw in front of my eyes ISIS soldiers pulling hair, beating girls, and slamming the heads of anyone who resisted. They were like animals.... Once they took the girls out, they would rape them and bring them back to exchange for new girls. The girls' ages ranged from 8 to 30 years... only 20 girls remained in the end.

Two sisters, Rana, 25, and Sara, 21, said they could do nothing to stop the abuse of their 16-year-old sister by four men over several months. The sister was allowed to visit them and told them that the first man who raped her, whom she described as a European, also beat her, handcuffed her, gave her electric shocks, and denied her food. She told them another fighter later raped her for a month and then gave her to an Algerian for another month. The last time they saw her was when a Saudi ISIS fighter took her. "We don't know anything about her since," Sara said. The two sisters said they were also raped multiple times by two men, one of whom said he was from Russia and the other from Kazakhstan.

Some women and girls told Human Rights Watch that ISIS fighters beat them if they resisted or defied them in any way.

Zara, 13, said that ISIS fighters accused her and two other girls of desecrating a Quran while holding the girls captive on a farm. "They punished the three of us by taking us to the garden and tying our hands with wire," she said. "We were blindfolded and they said they would kill us if we didn't say who had done this. They beat us for 10 minutes and they fired a bullet in the air."

Leila, 25, managed to escape from the house where she was held captive, but because she was behind ISIS lines, she realized she was trapped and felt compelled to return. The commander, an Iraqi, asked her why she had tried to escape. She said she replied: "Because what you are doing to us is haram [forbidden] and un-Islamic." He beat her with a cable and also punished the guard who had failed to prevent her escape attempt. The guard beat her as well. "Since then, my mental state has become very bad and I've had fainting spells," she said.
Forced Marriage
Women and girls told Human Rights Watch that ISIS fighters told them they had been bought for as much as US$2,000 from other ISIS members.

In some instances, ISIS fighters forcibly married their Yezidi captives rather than buy them. Narin, 20, said that when a fighter named Abu Du'ad brought her to his home, his wife left in protest. He brought a religious judge to perform a marriage ceremony but Narin refused to participate. Abu Du'ad persisted by trying to get permission from Narin's family and called her brother in Germany. "But [my brother] said no to the marriage and offered to pay $50,000 for my release," Narin said. "Abu Du'ad said no."

Nadia, 23, said she was separated from the men in her family when ISIS fighters abducted them in her village near Sinjar in August. She tried to convince the ISIS fighters that she was married to escape being raped, because she had heard that ISIS fighters preferred virgins. However, after they took her to Syria, one of the men said that he would marry her. "The other girls with me said it's forbidden to marry married women," Nadia said. "He replied, 'But not if they are Yezidi women.'"

ISIS has publicly acknowledged enslaving women and children. In an article entitled "The revival of slavery before the hour" in Dabiq, the group's online English-language magazine, ISIS said it was reviving a custom justified under Sharia (Islamic law):

After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State's authority to be divided as khums [a tax on war spoils].

A question-and-answer document, issued by what appears to be ISIS's Research and Fatwa Department, states:

It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of.... It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn't reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse; however if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse.... It is permissible to beat the female slave as a [form of] darb ta'deeb [disciplinary beating].

Suicide Attempts
The women and girls who spoke to Human Rights Watch described their own suicide attempts or attempts of others as a way to avoid rape, forced marriage, or forced religious conversion. They described cutting their wrists with glass or razors, attempting to hang themselves, trying to electrocute themselves in bathtubs, and consuming what they thought was poison.

Rashida, 31, managed to speak to one of her brothers after her abduction by secretly using a fighter's phone. She told her brother that ISIS fighters were forcing her to convert and then to marry. He told her he would try to help her but if he couldn't, "I should commit suicide because it would be better than the alternative." Rashida said:

Later that day they [ISIS fighters] made a lottery of our names and started to choose women by drawing out the names. The man who selected me, Abu Ghufran, forced me to bathe but while I was in the bathroom I tried to kill myself. I had found some poison in the house, and took it with me to the bathroom. I knew it was toxic because of its smell. I distributed it to the rest of the girls and we each mixed some with water in the bathroom and drank it. None of us died but we all got sick. Some collapsed.

Leila said she saw two girls try to kill themselves by slashing their wrists with broken glass. She also tried to commit suicide when her Libyan captors forced her to take a bath, which she knew was typically a prelude to rape:

I went into the bathroom, turned on the water, stood on a chair to take the wire connecting the light to electrocute myself but there was no electricity. After they realized what I was doing, they beat me with a long piece of wood and with their fists. My eyes were swollen shut and my arms turned blue. They handcuffed me to the sink, and cut my clothes with a knife and washed me. They took me out of the bathroom, brought in [my friend] and raped her in the room in front of me.

Leila said she was later raped. She said she tried to commit suicide again and showed Human Rights Watch the scars on her wrists where she cut herself with a razor.

Forced Conversions
About half the women and girls who spoke to Human Rights Watch said the ISIS fighters pressured them to convert to Islam. Zara, 13, said she was held captive in a three-story house in Mosul with girls ages 10 to 15:

When they came to select the girls, they would pull them away. The girls would cry and faint, they would have to take them by force. They made us convert to Islam and we all had to say the shahada [Islamic creed]. They said, "You Yezidis are kufar [infidels], you must repeat these words after the leader." They gathered us all in one place and made us repeat after him. After we said the shahada, he said you have now been converted to our religion and our religion is the correct one. We didn't dare not say the shahada.

ISIS fighters held Noor, 16, in various places including Mosul. "The leader of this group asked us to convert to Islam and read the Quran," she said. "We were forced to read the Quran and we started to pray slowly. We started to behave like actors."
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Rape and other forms of sexual violence, sexual slavery, cruel treatment, and other abuses committed during an armed conflict violate the laws of war. International criminal courts have ruled that rape and other sexual violence may also amount to torture.

Those who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes. Commanders and civilian leaders may be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility when they knew or should have known about the commission of war crimes and took insufficient measures to prevent them or punish those responsible.

The mass rape and other serious abuses by ISIS against Yezidi civilians may be crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are serious offenses, including rape, sexual slavery, enslavement, unlawful imprisonment, persecution of a religious group, and other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering, that are part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population.

"Widespread" refers to the scale of the acts or the number of victims. "Systematic" concerns "a pattern or methodical plan." ISIS public statements concerning enslavement, forced marriage, and abuse of captured women, as well as the organized sale of Yezidi women and girls, indicate a widespread practice and a systematic plan of action by ISIS.
Provision of Health Services Medical Care
KRG authorities have made significant efforts to provide health and other services to Yezidi women and girls and have designated a health committee in Dohuk to coordinate the identification and referral of survivors to services. The director general for health in Dohuk, Dr. Nezhar Ismet Taib, who heads the committee, said that some families do not wish to reveal that their female relatives were abducted and this has made it difficult for the committee to identify and support those in need.

Almost all of the women and girls who spoke to Human Rights Watch said they had received medical examinations. A local doctor said the medical tests included blood tests for sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. In some cases, medical workers provided emergency contraception and post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, as recommended by the World Health Organization.

It is not clear that doctors have always obtained informed consent before conducting examinations. Narin, the 20-year-old woman from Sinjar, told Human Rights Watch that she was abducted on August 3 and given as a "gift" to an ISIS fighter, who tried to force her to marry him:

I wasn't raped - [the ISIS member] didn't touch me because I told him I was sick.... I got a forensic gynecological exam in Dohuk, which cleared me of abuse. I wasn't comfortable during this exam, and [the doctor] didn't explain what she was doing to me beforehand.

Those who take the medical tests do not always receive the test results. The two sisters, Rana and Sara, said that they spent five months in ISIS captivity and that ISIS fighters raped them multiples times. They said that soon after they escaped in December they received medical treatment and tests, but six weeks later, they had still not received any test results.Eighteen-year-old Arwa, from Kocho, managed to escape in December after ISIS fighters raped her. She told Human Rights Watch that she was still waiting for her test results seven weeks later.

Local authorities should ensure that health workers inform women and girls of the purpose of each test and that they consent to each procedure. The World Health Organization has provided guidelines for carrying out such tests and obtaining informed consent.

Withholding test results, whether positive or negative, can compound women's and girls' fears about the state of their health. Health workers should ensure that there is follow up for such women and girls, including providing test results and any further treatment and information they need.
Psychosocial Support
Psychosocial support for women and girls who escaped ISIS is a crucial service that is largely lacking in Iraqi Kurdistan. All the women and girls interviewed showed signs of trauma. Jalila, the 12-year-old raped by four ISIS fighters, said she "can't sleep at night because I remember how they were raping me. I want to do something to forget about my psychological problems. I want to leave Iraq until things get better, I don't want to be captured again." She had not received professional counselling.

Sixteen-year-old Noor told Human Rights Watch that ISIS fighters abducted her on August 3 from Tal Afar and held her until September, when she escaped. An ISIS fighter raped her multiple times over a period of five days, she said. In the first two months after her return, she said she remained traumatized and cried most of the time.

Noor did manage to get psychosocial support. A local activist arranged for her to visit a psychotherapist in the hospital three or four times and visited her frequently to encourage her to get regular psychosocial counselling. Noor was undergoing regular psychosocial treatment as well as attending a handicrafts course and leaving the camp for social activities with activists from local organizations.

However, representatives of international agencies and nongovernmental groups told Human Rights Watch that there was not only a lack of available psychosocial support, but also reluctance by the community to accept such help. One activist said that he had to visit girls and their guardians repeatedly to encourage the girls to participate in psychosocial counselling before they would agree.

Several of those Human Rights Watch interviewed stated that they would like to receive psychosocial therapy. Narin, the 20-year-old from Sinjar, said:

No one has offered me one-on-one counselling of any kind. I'd be interested in receiving professional counselling to help me process my experiences if it was available.... I have trouble sleeping at night, and only sleep a few hours at a time. When I sleep, I often see my parents and siblings in front of my eyes, especially the image of my brothers being forced to kneel on the road, and my mother's face.

International and local groups agreed that there are not enough psychosocial therapists available to the women and girls to meet the need, given the number of escaped women and girls and the prospect of more to come.

Dr. Taib told Human Rights Watch that although he was not aware of any suicides of women or girls who had escaped, many were suicidal. He said that women and girls who sought treatment with local officials were assessed by a psychologist at the same time they received medical treatment. The health team designated to help Yezidi women and girls has two psychologists and two psychosocial therapists but plans to increase the number of psychosocial therapists to ten. In addition, some groups and international agencies are providing psychosocial support. A psychosocial therapist at Jian Centre for Human Rights said she and her colleague had provided support to 20 Yezidi women and girls who had escaped.

In the short term, psychologists and social workers, particularly those who speak the local Yezidi dialect, need training on counselling methods. This should be in addition to recruiting psychosocial therapists to deal with the urgent cases. More efforts are also needed to encourage and educate people who might need the services about how the services can help them.

Pregnancy and Children Born as a Result of Rape
The KRG has no comprehensive plan for addressing pregnancies or children born from rape. Dr. Taib told Human Rights Watch that the local health committee had agreed that the authorities should protect women who keep their children, including providing shelter for them and their children as well as prenatal and maternal health care. In cases where the women do not want to care for their children, personal status courts will have to make decisions about the welfare of the child.

Where the child's biological mother and close family relinquish or abandon the child, or are unable to provide adequate care, the authorities should ensure appropriate alternative care, with or through competent local authorities and authorized nongovernmental groups. In cases in which the child's biological mother and close family do not relinquish the child, authorities should direct efforts first at enabling the child to remain in the mother's care, or when appropriate, the care of other close family members unless it is not in the child's best interests. If women do choose to raise the children, there should be a plan for providing them with assistance, including psychosocial and financial support.

Officials should ensure that information about services is available to women and girls and can be accessed confidentially.

Abortion is illegal in Iraq. Local officials told Human Rights Watch that it is not permitted in the Kurdistan region even for rape cases unless a doctor considers it a medical necessity, such as a risk to the mother's life. The KRG should urgently clarify for healthcare providers the circumstances in which they may legally perform abortions for women and girls who have escaped from ISIS captivity, including for women and girls at risk of suicide or "honor"-related violence. The Iraqi government should also urgently consider amending the penal code to allow safe and legal abortions for women and girls who have experienced sexual violence.

In addition, KRG officials should encourage religious and community leaders to welcome children born from rape if the mothers freely choose to raise them in the Yezidi community and to provide the social support the women need.
Stigma and Reintegration
Baba Sheikh, a Yezidi religious leader, issued a statement on September 6 welcoming escaped women back into the community and stating that no one should harm them. On February 6, 2015, he reissued the appeal, saying:

These survivors remain pure Yezidis and no one may injure their Yezidi faith because they were subjected to a matter outside their control.... We therefore call on everyone to cooperate with and support these victims so that they may again live their normal lives and integrate into society.

These statements appear to have helped protect Yezidi women and girls from harm and have encouraged their families to seek treatment for them.

Ismail Ali, the KRG director general for combating violence against women in Dohuk, told Human Rights Watch that officials were not aware of any Yezidi girl or woman at risk from her family since returning, but should there be such cases, a shelter is available for them. In addition, authorities should provide programs that guarantee long-term rehabilitation and housing solutions for all women victims of violence who do not have the support of their families or who are under threat, and training for officials, local activists, and social and health workers to identify cases of women who are at risk of violence from their families. The authorities should also, in coordination with religious and community officials, raise awareness and provide education, particularly for men and boys, to prevent violence against women.

In addition, investment in skills training and livelihood schemes would help to reintegrate women into daily life. One organization is providing sewing and arts-and-crafts courses in the camps.

Many women and girls said that they wanted jobs so that they could financially assist their families. They also said that having nothing to do in the camps and being surrounded by family members who are also traumatized increased or exacerbated their own trauma.

Arwa, an 18-year-old from Kocho, said, "What I want more than anything is to work, so I can keep my mind off everything that happened."

The Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation (WADI), a German-Iraqi nongovernmental organization, is seeking funding to build a center where Yezidi women and girls can get skills training. Women and girls who escaped ISIS told Human Rights Watch that they would use such a facility. WADI case workers have taken some of these women and girls out of the camps for social activities, which appeared to help occupy them and provide a semblance of a normal life.

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Iraq: ISIS Escapees Describe Systematic Rape

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(New York) - The extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) has carried out systematic rape and other sexual violence against Yezidi women and girls in northern Iraq.