Yazidi Girls Subjected to ‘Virginity Tests’ After Escaping Daesh

A report was posted on the human rights organization’s website by Rothna Begum, a WRD researcher, on Wednesday.

“Survivors my colleague and I interviewed, described organized rape, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by ISIS,” the report reads.

Rothna Begum, said she spoke to a woman called Luna who had been kidnapped by Daesh as the militants 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 thought to have since undergone painful “virginity tests” as a way of proving the rapes to Iraqi officials documenting Daesh crimes.

“These tests were seen as evidence of rape by Iraqi courts,” Begum wrote.

The World Health Organization has stated that there is no place for virginity testing in modern practice, saying that the method of inserting two fingers “has no scientific validity” as it is painful and psychologically harming.

However, the good news is that the HRW has been assured by Kurdish officials that the practice will now end.

According to a chief judge at the Dohuk Appeal Court, located in the capital of Kurdistan’s Dohuk Governorate, said that the committee tasked with collecting evidence has stopped using the tests and adopted a new method of reporting coordinated with UN recommendations.

​“The health directorate in Dohuk adopted a new medical examination report on sexual violence based on UN recommendations, consistent with human rights and best practice,” Begum wrote.