Hear Her Cries

OVERVIEW

out for this report demonstrates widespread under- reporting. In Nigeria, for instance, the government documented 210 cases of conÁict-related sexual violence in 2020, including rape and forced marriage, “noting that such crimes continue to be chronically under-reported.” 19 And, demonstrating the struggle to assess the scale of the problem in Pakistan, one piece of research suggests that nationwide up to 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls are forcibly married and converted every year, 20 while other evidence gives the same Àgure for just one province ― Sindh. 21 That there should be such widespread under- reporting of cases is largely self-evident. The main reason, and one that became increasingly apparent as research for this report continued, is fear of casting shame on the victim, their families and sometimes their community. In Nigeria, the UN highlighted under-reporting “owing to stigma and harmful social norms.” 22 Speaking from Iraq, Syriac Catholic Archbishop Nizar Nathaniel Semaan highlighted difÀculties Ànding out what happened to minority faith women and girls who had been abducted by Daesh, adding: “What did they do? Did they get married? They won’t say anything because they are ashamed and don’t want to talk about it.” 23 Low reporting levels are also associated with fear of reprisal from perpetrators. This factor is a recurring theme in a signiÀcant proportion of the cases examined in this study. When two 18-year-old Coptic girls went missing in Egypt in summer 2021, no details were released about the incident, prompting speculation that families had agreed to say nothing as the price to be paid for their return. A third key reason for under-reporting is institutional resistance from police and courts in following up cases of missing girls and women. This affects the incidence rate as perpetrators know their chances of punishment are reduced if they conÀne their attacks to minority faith communities. In Egypt, for

are claimed for that new faith as well. Referring to Daesh Àghters, Christian persecution expert Marta Petrosillo stated: “Forced pregnancies and conversions are... a means to secure ‘the next generation of jihadists’.” This applies to many others engaged in sexual violence and religious persecution. 14 Evidence has emerged showing that religious coercion and sexual violence have been carried out in an effort to trigger a mass movement of an unwanted faith community. This could be said to apply to northern Nigeria, where a spokesman for Boko Haram stated that the aim of the militant extremist group was to drive Christians into leaving en masse, before adding: “We are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping women.” 15 According to Amnesty International’s Makmid Kamara, those seized by Boko Haram suffered “horriÀc abuses” 16 including rape. Such evidence indicates that instances of systemic abduction, sexual violence, forced marriage and conversion of Christian women in countries such as Nigeria, Iraq and Syria, can be categorized as genocidal by nature. The fourth “Element” of the “1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” is the presence of “measures intended to prevent births within the group.”17 There is thus a link between the girls and young women who are the focus of this study and the convention, which categorizes genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” 18 Although in some countries the targeting of Christian girls can be deÀned as genocidal in nature, in many others it is impossible to draw the same conclusion, not necessarily because the problem is less severe but in large part because of a paucity of evidence. Indeed, in almost every instance, research carried

8 | HEAR HER CRIES