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are particularly susceptible to attack. According to the Christian Association of Nigeria, Christians make up 95 percent of women and girls being held by Islamists. 10 In Pakistan, the Movement for Solidarity and Peace calculated in 2014 that Christians could comprise up to 70 percent of minority faith girls and young women forcibly converted and married every year. 11 Another key Ànding, frequently emerging in research on the topic, is that there is a higher incidence rate of sexual and religious persecution of women in situations of conÁict. This was evident especially during the Daesh (ISIS) military takeover of parts of Syria and Iraq where there was “an organized system of sexual enslavement of minorities.” 12 There are reports of this elsewhere, too, such as in Mozambique and in other countries where religious militancy has thrown whole communities into disarray. The violence has also caused an upsurge in trafÀcking. 13 The Daesh example also points to perhaps the most signiÀcant long-term factor of concern regarding forced marriage and conversion of Christian girls and women, namely evidence that the perpetrators’ motive is to limit the growth, and sometimes the very survival, of that particular faith group. Forcing a woman to abandon her Christian faith not only wins a convert to the predator’s religion; it also ensures that any children born, including through forced marriage, ” Boko Haram We are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping women.
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