Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Who is bullying whom?

    A Wiltshire MP has said he will not be bullied into cutting ties with a charity that sponsored an event where a “cure” for homosexuality was discussed.

  • BBC will interview people at an abortion clinic

    Opponents of the right to abortion are angry, saying this amounts to “free advertising” for abortion.

  • You gonna believe Mona Eltahawy or the grand mufti?

    Nahed Eltantawy responds to Mona Eltahawy’s article on woman-hating in the Middle East. She hates it.

    I felt deeply offended and insulted by Mona Eltahawy’s latest article in Foreign Policy, titled Why Do They Hate Us?   I follow Eltahawy’s columns quite regularly and I accept many of her arguments, even if I do not agree with her views on Islam and veiling. But for her to claim that “they” hate Arab women is in my view complete nonsense…Everything, from virginity tests, to sexual deprivation, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment and child marriage, is included in this article to produce a column that will surely be welcomed by many Western feminists and anti-Islamists, who for years have been telling us that Muslim women are weak, oppressed victims of misogyny and rigid Islamic rules that force them to hide behind their veils.

    Meaning what? We shouldn’t worry about women stoned to death, girls taken out of school and forced into marriage, girls who are held down while their genitals are sliced off, women whipped for not wearing a burqa? We should just say “that’s their culture, it’s none of our business” and go on our way rejoicing? We should be insular and selfish and indifferent?

    But for many Arab women (I say many based on the negative reaction Eltahawy’s column has already stirred), this column is offensive and is nothing but a combination of old cultural practices and undemocratic government actions that are described in a way to represent women as the Oriental Other, weak, helpless and submissive, oppressed by Islam and the Muslim male, this ugly, barbaric monster.

    Ah yes, naughty Orientalist Mona Eltahawy, representing Arab women as the Other. How does that work, exactly?

    …some of the evidence Eltahawy relies on, such as virginity tests, criminal codes, etc are problems of undemocratic governing and have nothing to do with hate of women. These are problems that also impact men. There are numerous accounts of police brutality in Egypt, where men have been beaten, sexually abused or beaten to death. Have we forgotten about Khaled Said, the young Alexandrian, whose brutal death sparked the Jan25 Revolution? Or how about Essam Atta, the young man who was tortured to death in prison? Why do we always have to focus on violence against women?

    “Virginity tests” in which cops shove fingers up women have nothing to do with hate of women? Really? As for that final question – words fail me.

    I find Eltahawy’s discussion of sexual harassment also problematic. Eltahawy, very candidly and on more than one occasion, has described in detail her ordeal with Egyptian riot police back in November 2011. She explained how she was groped everywhere by a number of police officers while in Cairo. Yet in this Foreign Policy column, she adds a new detail; she informs her audience that she was groped earlier that day by a fellow protester in Tahrir Square! But while Eltahawy details her groping ordeal, she fails to mention the heroic Egyptian women and men who are fighting this epidemic. There is no denial that sexual harassment is a disgusting and sick problem in Egypt that needs to be eradicated. Yet, there’s also no denial that there are gutsy women who are already engaged in a battle against this epidemic.

    Boy, that’s a devastating rejoinder. Yes, sexual harassment is a disgusting and sick problem in Egypt, but somehow Mona is naughty for saying so. Why?
    Meanwhile, in woman-loving Saudi Arabia, the grand mufti says girls are ready for marriage at age ten. Yes, ten.

    A girl is ready to marry at 10 or 12 years of age according to Islam, London-based Al Hayat reported Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh as saying, adding that Islamic law is not repressive to women.
    “Those who call for raising the age of marriage to 25 are absolutely mistaken,”Al Sheikh said in a lecture at the faculty of Imam Mohamed bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.
    He added: “Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age.”

    Oh yeah? Can good upbringing make her wide enough to bear children without getting a fistula? No, it can’t, so enormous numbers of women have ruined lives because they leak piss or shit or both and everybody shuns them.

    And then there’s the little matter of education, and being able to choose something to do with her life other than or in addition to domestic work. “Good upbringing” may make it possible for her to do all the housework at age ten, but it doesn’t make it desirable.
    And then there’s the fact that few ten-year-old girls want to have sex, especially with grown men.
    But the grand mufti’s indifference to the well-being and flourishing of girls and women has nothing to do with hatred – oh heavens no. It would be Orientalist to say that.

  • How did that get there?!

    There’s a new group in Tunisia, Equality and Parity, that is protesting the wearing of the niqab.

    Equality and Parity promised that they will plan manifestations and sit-ins if women’s rights are violated in Tunisia. The group lobbies against denigrating women’s representation in decision-making – whether it be in the political, social, cultural, or economic sphere. It also promotes the full citizenship of women and total eradication of gender discrimination.

    It put together a rather cryptic video that looks like a campaign for the niqab but is apparently intended as a campaign against it. Maybe it just seems cryptic to me because I’m not familiar with Tunisian advertising.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaRXO_Lo74

     

  • Mali: armed groups in North are raping women

    Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since the beginning of year.

  • Reportedly offended by

    Egypt.

    A court in Egypt has upheld the three-month prison sentence given to the leading comic actor, Adel Imam, for insulting Islam in his films and plays.

    Is that an accurate translation? Is that really what the charge is? “Insulting” Islam? How do you “insult” an abstraction? In English, at least, you don’t. You don’t “insult” capitalism or advertising or libertarianism or computer programming or socialism. You can only insult people. The word implies reception and reaction, which imply consciousness, and fairly elaborate consciousness at that. You can only insult something with a mind. Insult requires Theory of Mind.

    The case brought against Imam by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups, accused the actor of frequently mocking the authorities and politicians in his films and plays, and offending Islam and its symbols.

    Imam’s movies regularly top the Egyptian box office and the types of roles he plays have varied enormously across his career.

    Mr Mansour was reportedly offended by the film Al-Irhabi (The Terrorist), in which Imam plays a radical Islamist; the play Al-Zaeem (The Leader), a comedy satirising Middle Eastern autocrats; and the film Morgan Ahmed Morgan, which sees a rich businessman stand for parliament.

    Egypt must have an incredibly flawed legal system, for such a case to make sense. One, why should the courts care what Mr Mansour was “offended” by; two, actors in movies are not necessarily responsible for the content of the movies anyway. Three, fuck off.

  • Egyptian court upholds sentence for “insulting Islam”

    The case brought against actor Adel Imam by an Islamist lawyer accused the actor of mocking the authorities in his films and plays, and offending Islam and its symbols.

  • Poke the hatred in its eye

    Mona Eltahawy pulls no punches in her Foreign Policy article on the hatred of women in the Middle East. She’s pissed, man.

    I could find you a host of crackpots sounding off on Woman the Insatiable Temptress, but I’m staying mainstream with  Qaradawi, who commands a huge audience on and off the satellite channels. Although he says female genital mutilation (which he calls “circumcision,” a common euphemism that tries to put the practice on a par with male circumcision) is not “obligatory,” you will also find this priceless observation in one of his books: “I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world. Anyone who thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters should do it,” he wrote, adding, “The moderate opinion is in favor of practicing circumcision to reduce temptation.”

    Notice that it’s the man who gets to decide; notice that he gets to decide for his daughters; notice that the daughters have no say; notice that this reduction of “temptation” is the elimination of sexual arousal; ponder the apparent lack of need to reduce male “temptation” by a similar form of amputation.

    Just as regime-appointed clerics lull the poor across the region with promises of justice — and nubile virgins — in the next world rather than a reckoning with the corruption and nepotism of the dictator in this life, so women are silenced by a deadly combination of men who hate them while also claiming to have God firmly on their side.

    Exactly. The religion makes it all ok, because after all, it’s religion – don’t look at me, it’s God who made the rules.

    What hope can there be for women in the new Egyptian parliament, dominated as it is by men stuck in the seventh century? A quarter of those parliamentary seats are now held by Salafis, who believe that mimicking the original ways of the Prophet Mohammed is an appropriate prescription for modern life. Last fall, when fielding female candidates, Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party ran a flower in place of each woman’s face. Women are not to be seen or heard — even their voices are a temptation — so there they are in the Egyptian parliament, covered from head to toe in black and never uttering a word.

    That I didn’t know. It’s…pathetic.

    SO WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

    First we stop pretending. Call out the hate for what it is. Resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips. You — the outside world — will be told that it’s our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, or Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman. The Arab uprisings may have been sparked by an Arab man — Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire in desperation — but they will be finished by Arab women.

    …

    We are more than our headscarves and our hymens. Listen to those of us fighting. Amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye. There was a time when being an Islamist was the most vulnerable political position in Egypt and Tunisia. Understand that now it very well might be Woman. As it always has been.

     

     

  • What you need to know

    A reader sent me a link to this Dear Daughter letter.

    Dear daughter –

    You should know that you are hated.

    It’s true; she needs to know that.

    There is nothing worse than being a girl. I’m not saying this as a former girl- I quite liked being a girl. I’m saying this from the POV of the entire rest of the world. There was a lovely feminist TED talk – A Call To Men – where a man discussed his conversation with a twelve year old boy, and the boy said he would rather die than be called a girl. And the man thought, Good Lord, how do these boys view girls, if being compared to them is the worst thing in the world?  

    I watched that talk – it’s very good – and actually what the boy said is that it would destroy him to be called a girl. That’s even worse, in a way. It’s not at all surprising though. I already know that’s what boys and men think, unless they’re consciously feminist. I see and hear it all the time. I have a corrupt taste for shows on the Discover channel about people doing backbreaking dangerous work in the worst possible conditions, like fishing the Bering Sea while huge waves crash over the deck every few minutes, so I see lots of “You do that like a girrrrrl” followed by loud jeering laughter. But then I heard the same thing when I was a laborer for the parks department. It’s familiar. All-male workplaces are awash in contempt for women.

    Intelligent design? Don’t make me laugh.

  • TED talk: Tony Porter: a call to men

    If a 12-year-old boy says it would destroy him to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?

  • Letter to a daughter

    Dear daughter – You should know that you are hated.

  • Mona Eltahawy on misogyny in the Middle East

    When it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse.

  • D’Arcy refuses to apologize to bishops

    He repeated his apology for saying “fucked up” in the morning, but said the apology demanded by the Catholic Communications Office “would not be forthcoming”.

  • Delusions of choice

    And now I’ll spell out exactly why I think the Collective Response is so wrong and bad.

    The hijab is a statement of female subordination, and it’s also a statement of loyalty or obedience to a ferociously misogynist and coercive religion. Some people are “offended” to be told that. It doesn’t follow that it’s not true.

    Women who wear the hijab without being forced are making a mistake, just as nuns are making a mistake in being nuns. Both sets of women are endorsing a religion that systematically and explicitly bars them from leadership positions in the religion and declares them subordinate and inferior overall. That’s a mistake. It’s not “racist” to say that.

    The Collective Response claims that wearing the hijab is a matter of choice.

    What we do find deeply problematic, however, is the questioning of women’s choice to wear the niqab and the presumption that this decision is rooted in a “false consciousness.”

    …

    To us, it is deeply troubling to be patronized by a person who insists the hijab is never a choice made of free will.

    Note that in the first mention they say “niqab” – which takes their wrongness to a whole new level. They said in a comment that this was a slip of the tongue (some slip!) but they decided to leave it “in hopes of sparking a multilayered discussion that engages understandings of the hijab as well as the niqab.” This just underlines their fundamental frivolity and callousness. Yes let’s also spark a multilayered discussion that engages understandings of stoning to death and girls married off at age 9 and girls’ genitalia carved up like a roasted duck and girls and women murdered for saying No. Let’s treat it all as a “site” for “multilayered discussion” of “intersectionality” and perhaps another publication in The Journal of Pious Horseshit. Yes let’s have a fun detached multilayered chat about women wearing cloth bags over their heads with only a tiny slit in front of the eyes.

    Moving on…They find it problematic that Wilde-Blavatsky questions women’s “choice” to wear the niqab and the hijab. Really? It’s clear from their use of jargon that they consider themselves highly sophisticated, but what is sophisticated about taking the notion of choice and free will as transparent and unproblematic? What do they think they mean? How would it be possible to make a free choice to wear the hijab? Free how, free in what sense? Free of influence of any kind?

    The idea is ridiculous. We don’t do anything social that way. We certainly don’t wear clothes free of influence – our “choices” are shaped by what’s available and by what’s “normal” – no matter what choices we make, they’re shaped by constraints of that kind. If we “choose” to wear a leopard-pattern loincloth, that choice is shaped by various influences just as a choice to wear jeans and a sweatshirt is – and just as a choice to wear the hijab is.

    And the hijab is what it is and not something else. It’s not a baseball cap or a scrunchie. It’s not secular. It has the meaning it has, and there is no “choice” that women can make that alters that fact. It’s a religious garment, with an extensive history of coercion and even violence – a lot of violence – that can’t be erased just by calling it a choice. Imagine a Jew in Amsterdam or Paris in 1946 making a “choice” to wear a yellow star. No “choice” could have erased the meaning of the yellow star. No “choice” can erase the meaning of the hijab now.

  • A note was left

    To expand on one part of the Adele Wilde-Blavatsky and the Collective Response issue…

    Wilde-Blavatsky said at the beginning of her article

    Last month, an American-born Iraqi woman, Shaima Alawadi, was viciously murdered in the United States. According to reports, her daughter stated that a racist note was left outside the family home before the attack. Alawadi’s death came shortly after another allegedly racially-motivated murder, that of African-American man Trayvon Martin.

    The Collective Response treated that account of the murder of Alawi as true. But is it? I wanted to explore that question yesterday but I didn’t have time, and overnight BenSix provided a helpful link in a comment.

    The story sounded wrong to me from the outset – if it were a racist attack, why would it single out one particular woman inside a house? That’s not how racist attacks usually go – unless the one particular person is an activist or organizer or the like. Racist attacks on random people to “send a message” target people on the street or everyone in a house that is torched or fire-bombed. Going into a house to kill one person sounds like a very odd kind of racist attack.

    And it turns out there are reasons to think that’s not what it was.

    But records obtained by NBCSanDiego revealed that Alawadi was having problems with her husband and daughter. Investigators said Alawadi was planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas.

    The warrants also show that the victim’s daughter Fatima was  upset about the family’s plan to have her marry one of her cousins. Police found a text message on the teenage daughter’s cell phone, at the time she was being  interviewed by detectives. The text read: “The detective will find  out. Tell him ‘[can’t] talk’.”

    Records also show a possible suspect was near the house on  the day of the crime. A neighbor gave police a description of a possible suspect  spotted running from the crime scene.

    The suspect is described as a “darker skinned boy in his late  teens or early 20s … with a skinny build, carrying a donut shaped cardboard  box.” He was seen at 10:30 a.m., about 45 minutes before Alawadi’s daughter called 911.

    …

    Records reveal that on Nov. 3 last year, Fatima and  21-year-old Rawnaq Yacub were contacted by police for possibly having sex in a parked car. Officers contacted Alawadii, who went to the incident location.  Alwadi was driving her daughter away from the area when Fatima said “I love you  mom,” then jumped out of the car while it was moving at 35 mph.

    Fatima was transported to the hospital with multiple  injuries, including a possible broken arm, according to police. The 17-year-old  told paramedics and hospital staff that she was being forced to marry her cousin and did not want to do so, which is why she jumped out of the car. Fatima  refused to talk to police at the hospital, according to the documents.

    Since the March 21 incident, police have asked a judge for  permission to search the car of Alawadi’s husband, Kassim Alhimidi.

    So, possibly nothing like the Trayvon Martin case at all. Possibly not in any sense a racist attack.

  • You know what you can do with your collective response

    Maryam points out, in agreement with Adele Wilde-Blavatsky, that the hoodie and the hijab are not the same. Wilde-Blavatsky published an article arguing that on the website The Feminist Wire on April 13.

    What I take issue with here is the equating of the hoodie and the hijab as sources of ethnic identity and pride. The hijab, which is discriminatory and rooted in men’s desire to control women’s appearance and sexuality, is not a choice for the majority of women who wear it. The hoodie, on the other hand, is a choice for everyone who wears it. The history and origin of these two items of clothing and what they represent could not be more different; like comparing the crippling footbindings of Chinese women with a `Made in China’ Nike trainer.

    …

    This is not neo-colonialism either. Muslim feminists have spoken out against the burqa and hijab, and even supported the French ban in schools. Fadela Amara explained her support for France’s ban:

    The veil is the visible symbol of the subjugation of women, and therefore has no place in the mixed, secular spaces of France’s public school system.

    When some feminists began defending the headscarf on the grounds of “tradition”, Amara vehemently disagreed:

    They define liberty and equality according to what  colour your skin is. They won’t denounce forced marriages or female genital mutilation, because, they  say, it’s tradition. It’s nothing more than neocolonialism. It’s not tradition, it’s archaic. French feminists are totally contradictory. When Algerian women fought against wearing the headscarf in Algeria, French feminists supported them. But when it’s some young girl in a French suburb school, they don’t.

    Shock-horror – she actually said the hijab is rooted in men’s desire to control women’s appearance and sexuality. She actually quoted Fadela Amara saying it is the visible symbol of the subjugation of women. This must not be! So a group of women signed a Collective Response (uh oh – the very name makes me turn pale with nausea) to explain how terribly wrong it is to say that the hijab is a symbol of the subjugation of women. It’s badly-written, and jargony, and stupid, and wrong.

    An article recently published on The Feminist Wire’s website and circulated via its facebook page has prompted this note. In her article, “To Be Anti-Racist Is To Be Feminist: The Hoodie and the Hijab Are Not Equals,” Adele Wilde-Blavatsky attempts to address the important question of what it means to be an anti-racist feminist in the 21st century. Her article, however, serves to assert white feminist privilege and power by producing a reductive understanding of racial and gendered violence and by denying Muslim women their agency.

    In her article, Wilde-Blavatsky takes “issue with … the equating of the hoodie and the hijab as sources of ethnic identity.” Oblivious to the important cross-racial and cross-ethnic connections and solidarities made in light of the tragic murders of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi, the author contends that the hoodie and the hijab cannot be compared because “the history and origin of these two items of clothing and what they represent could not be more different.” For her, Trayvon Martin’s hoodie signifies a history of racism, whereas Shaima Alawadi’s hijab signifies only male domination and female oppression. Revealing her own biases, Wilde-Blavatsky writes, “The hijab, which is discriminatory and rooted in men’s desire to control women’s appearance and sexuality, is not a choice for the majority of women who wear it. The hoodie, on the other hand, is a choice for everyone who wears it” (emphasis in original).

    And that’s all they say about that. They don’t say why  Wilde-Blavatsky is wrong to say that the hoodie signifies a history of racism while the hijab signifies male domination and female oppression. It would have been helpful if they had said why, because frankly I have no idea why they think that. How would the hijab not be such a signifier when women get whipped, beaten, fined, imprisoned, and sometimes killed for failing or refusing to wear it? Does anybody anywhere get whipped or killed for refusing to wear a hoodie? Does The Man force anyone to wear a hoodie?

    And then what’s the crap about the important cross-racial and cross-ethnic connections and solidarities made in light of the tragic murders of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi? What is it that Wilde-Blavatsky is “oblivious” to? What does it have to do with her point? She’s certainly not arguing that women should be murdered for wearing a hijab, so what is it that she’s oblivious to? People can agree across racial and ethnic differences that no one should be killed for wearing the wrong kind of headgear, and Wilde-Blavatsky wrote nothing to interfere with that view. That claim looks to me like a meaningless piety rather than an argument.

    To us, it is deeply troubling to be patronized by a person who insists the hijab is never a choice made of free will. But what is even more saddening is that such opinions are being propagated on a feminist site with a commitment to highlighting the consequences of the “ill-fated pursuit of wars abroad and the abandonment of a vision of social justice at home.” The consequences of such wars have included the demonization, incarceration, and oppression of Muslim men, women, and children at home and abroad.

    Non sequitur follows non sequitur. It’s not patronizing to point out that the hijab is not always “a choice made of free will” – and W-B in fact didn’t say it’s never a free choice, so they’re being simply dishonest in saying she “insists the hijab is never a choice made of free will.”

    As feminists deeply committed to challenging racism and Islamophobia and how it differentially impacts black and Muslim (and black Muslim) communities, we wish to open up a dialogue about how to build solidarities across complex histories of subjugation and survival. This space is precisely what is shut down in this article. In writing this letter, we emphasize that our concern is not solely with Adele Wilde-Blavatsky’s article but with the broader systemic issues revealed in the publication of a work that prevents us from challenging hierarchies of privilege and building solidarity.

    Bullying nonsense. Nothing was “shut down” in the article; nothing prevents them from “challenging hierarchies of privilege and building solidarity.”

    Maryam offers a much better statement.

    We extend our full solidarity to Adele Wilde-Blavatsky for such a clear and rare analysis from feminists in Europe and North America, in which women’s resistance to the Muslim Right -including by resisting all forms of fundamentalist veiling – is made visible and honoured, rather than sacrificed on the altar of anti racism and anti imperialism’.

    * Marieme Helie Lucas, sociologist, Algeria, founder and former international coordinator of the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws ( wluml), coordinator Secularism Is A Women’s Issue

    * Fatou Sow, Researcher, Senegal, international coordinator, Women Living Under Muslim Laws

    * Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson, One Law for All and Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, Iran/UK

    * Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, U S A

    * Khawar Mumtaz, Shirkat Gah, Pakistan

     

     

     

  • It’s always priorities, isn’t it

    Ah the Catholic church in Ireland – always shameless, always brazen, always ignoring the harm it does to other people while demanding infinite respect for itself. This time it has its mitres in a knot because a broadcaster said it had fucked things up in Ireland. Yes, and?

    The Communications Office of the Irish bishops has demanded a full apology and retraction from radio presenter Ray D’Arcy after he told listeners “the Catholic Church, in many ways, has fucked up this country”…

    Catholic communications chief Martin Long has demanded that the station and presenter retract the “insulting” and “offensive” comment on air tomorrow.

    Oh has he. Has he really. The Irish bishops who concealed child rape and transferred rapist priests instead of reporting them to the police, thus enabling them to go on raping. The Irish bishops at the head of an organization that for generations imprisoned women in laundries to do slave labor for decades – an organization that made those women raise their children for three years and then hand them over to the “mother superior” and sign an oath “never to attempt to see, interfere with or make any claim to the said child at any future time.” The Irish bishops at the head of an organization that imprisoned the children of parents with no money for the sake of the cash the state paid them; an organization that starved the children and tortured them emotionally and physically. Those Irish bishops.

    How fucking dare they.

    H/t Robin.

  • Irish bishops demand apology for “insult”

    Irish bishops. Of the Catholic church. Demand. An apology. Tell that to Philomena Lee.

  • Germany: Salafists distribute 25 million copies of the Koran

    The German translation they are distributing has edited out many of the verses which call on Muslims to make war on infidels.

  • No life for girls

    Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child (read: girl) marriage in the world; 20% are married off before the age of 15.

    This of course means they get pregnant young, and give birth young. This means they get fistulas. This ruins their lives. There are tens of thousands in that situation, as there are in Africa. (In Sudan for instance. In Niger and Kenya. In Nigeria.)

    There are people who campaign against child marriage in Bangladesh.

    “I do this work because I wanted to put a smile back on the face of the parents,” says Oli Ahmed. He grins as he says it.

    Oli is a campaigner who goes around the slum where he lives in Dhaka standing up to his elders and telling them why they shouldn’t marry off their daughters so young.

    He’s the same age as Poppy, just 12.

    He’s 12!! 12. You’re a good human being, Oli.

    “I used to know a girl who was like an older sister to me, but she was forced to get married and never came back.”

    It made him very angry and sad…Oli approached Plan International which was already working in his slum in Dhaka.

    He told them he wanted to set up a group led by children to try and stop the practice. He goes door to door with a group of friends persuading, scolding and hectoring parents.

    …

    One NGO worker says that since they started work, the number of child marriages in that area has dropped by as much as 50%.

    “I feel very good that a girl’s life has been saved because of the work that I’ve done,” says Oli.

    Now all we need is tens of thousands of 12-year-olds like Oli.