After going through repeated sexual abuse and humiliation in the hands of the notorious Islamic State militants, young girls from the Yazidi community are now forced to undergo traumatic virginity tests in Iraqi courts.
A UN report has estimated that 3,500 people – mainly Yazidi women and young girls – were being kept as sex slaves by IS (Daesh) in Iraq. “Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yazidi community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities,” the joint report issued by UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and UN human rights office said.
The tests are seen as proof of rape by Iraqi courts, even as its validity is not accurate. WHO has previously said that the belief that all virgin women and girls have intact hymens and bleed on first intercourse is inaccurate.
“Kurdistan officials took their needs seriously, but subjected some unmarried women and girls to ‘virginity tests’ – an abusive and inaccurate procedure – as part of a forensic, post-rape examination. Judge Ayman Bamerny, who heads a committee gathering evidence of ISIS crimes, told us these tests were seen as evidence of rape by Iraqi courts,” Human Rights Watch researcher (Women’s Rights Division), Rothna Begum, said.
She spoke to a woman called Luna who had been kidnapped by ISIS as the group swept through northern Iraq in 2014, sold four times and raped by all her “owners”.
She was one of hundreds of Yazidi women and girls believed to have since undergone painful “virginity tests” as a method of proving the rapes to Iraqi officials documenting ISIS crimes.
A judge told Human Rights Watch researchers that the committee gathering evidence has subsequently stopped using the examinations and that a new reporting method has been adopted by the health directorate in Dohuk, based on UN recommendations.
“This is an important step for women and girls like “Luna” who can now pursue justice for the crimes against them in a process that shows deeper respect for women’s rights and a commitment to providing better care for rape survivors,” Begum said.
Virginity exams, which are conducted out of cultural or religious beliefs, are commonly used in many parts of the world, including India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Indonesia, and South Africa.
However, such tests have been long been under fire by the World Health Organization, which has pointed out that they can cause pain and psychological harm.
