Trafficking, forced marriages of Christian women on the rise worldwide, Open Doors reports By Emily Wood for The Christian Post
Persecution of Christian women worldwide has risen dramatically in the last year as a new study released by Open Doors International found that forced marriages have increased by 16%, and physical violence against women has increased 31%.
Global persecution watchdog group Open Doors International released the 2021 “Same Faith, Different Persecution” report on gender-specific religious persecution ahead of International Women’s Day finds(GSRP) to detail the plight of the global persecuted Church and how this especially affects women.
GSRP has risen to the highest level recorded in the three years since the report was first issued in 2018, as women face a higher potential risk of religious persecution than men. The report’s data comes from the top 50 countries on the group’s annual World Watch List between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sep. 30, 2020.
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Helene Fisher, a global gender persecution specialist for Open Doors International and one of the authors of the report, told The Christian Post that the increased threat to women is often because women have fewer rights in most of the top 50 countries for religious persecution.
“Because [women] have fewer rights and fewer protections, they’re just an easier target,” Fisher said.
“They can also be targeted with impunity, which means that if there is a population that doesn’t want the Christians to thrive, they can go after the women and girls. And there aren’t consequences for those aggressors. So, it is a question of the women and girls having fewer rights for legal protections. [Women] are more vulnerable in the society, and they are just the easiest way to disable the Christian population.”
Fisher and the other authors of the report — Eva Brown, Elizabeth Lane Miller and Rachel Morley — highlight that faith, combined with their gender, puts women more at risk.
The five most common “pressure points” among women in the top 50 countries on the World Watch List for religious persecution are forced marriage, sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence and forced divorce. Each category increased since last year’s study.
