Sisterhood is Global Institute Jordan<\/a>, recounts how it all started when she tried to seek to work after failing to continue school studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI left school to work in a mobile shop in the surrounding neighbourhood of my home. The owner of the shop, who is divorced and has children, knows that the financial situation of my family is quite difficult, so he proposed to increase my salary through working more hours in his home; taking care of his kids, cleaning the house and cooking for his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDue to the financial situation of my family, I accepted his offer and started to work also in his house. One day, he came over to the house and gave me two pills to drink since I had a headache. I couldn\u2019t remember what happened next; I woke up and found myself naked and raped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t tell my family what had happened. I cried and cried not knowing what to do. At that moment, I realised that my family would be devastated. He tried to calm me by saying \u2018I will marry you\u2019 and he promised to go and ask for my hand. In order to make me more confident, he brought a piece of paper and we both signed a marriage contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI went home without knowing what to do. I was frightened, devastated, and thought of keeping silent. That month, I didn\u2019t get my period and I realised that I was pregnant. I told him that I was pregnant and tried several times to abort the baby without success. My mother managed to take me to a private hospital to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI decided to go and file a complaint at the police station because of my baby. I accused him of raping me. He then proposed to marry me under article 308 of the Jordanian Penal Code where the prosecution will be stopped if he does so. With all the hatred I have in my heart, my family forced me to marry him so as to save the \u2018family\u2019s honour\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI married him and I moved to live with him with all the negative memories of rape and deception. I thought that my life with my baby might make me happy, but I was very wrong; my situation deteriorated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy only hope from marrying him was to make my baby safe. I was keen to register him in his father\u2019s name, but I failed. He started to negotiate by offering to recognise the baby while divorcing me. I accepted that because I could not bear living with my rapist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe went to court and I asked for a divorce giving up my legal rights. Still to date, I could not register my baby in his father\u2019s name and my battle to do still continues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Noor\u2019s story is just of many that are repeated day in and day out, not only in Jordan but in many other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Girls and women in Lebanon, for example, face a similar situation under Article 522 of the country\u2019s penal code, which exonerates rapists if they marry their victims<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To draw attention to the issue, activists hung 31 wedding dresses from nooses on Beirut\u2019s seafront on April 21 as the country\u2019s parliament prepares to vote on abolition of Article 522.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The installation was designed by Lebanese artist Mireille Honein who told AFP that Article 522 had left women “without an identity” and was “shameful for those imposing it on them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Nations estimates that rape and sexual abuse affect nearly one billion women and girls over their lifetime. [IDN-InDepthNews \u2013 25 April 2017]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Image credit: Equality Now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phil Harris ROME (IDN) \u2013 Many girls and young women in a number of countries still live in fear of what has been called \u201cstone age\u201d legislation that allows men to rape and then marry them to avoid prosecution. One such country is Jordan, where the plight of these actual and potential victims is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,38,16,32],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education-women-children","8":"category-middle-east","9":"category-news","10":"category-regions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}