Female family members mourn outside the home of Rokhshana in the village of Yakhdaan,
Afghanistan the day of the funeral. Cultural traditions forbid women to attend funerals.
Rokhshana set herself on fire when her husband, who left her to go to Iran 14 years earlier, demanded she return to him.
She died in the hospital from her wounds.
A rose is held up to the face of Rokhshana, who was near death in Herat, Afghanistan.
Niamat Shah Safi weeps over the grave of his daughter Khalida, who set herself on fire after
enduring years of abuse from her husband and in-laws. Her younger sister, Khadija, 8 (right), was her main caregiver while she lay dying with burns. The family lives in a small village
outside of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Marzia, 15, struggles while having her burns cleaned in Herat, Afghanistan. The painful but
necessary ritual is performed daily by the nurse as part of the recovery process. Marzia set herself on fire because she was afraid of her husband’s reaction to her breaking the family television set. They were married when she was only 9 years old.
Meena, 15, weeps remembering her experience as a child bride. After escaping her abusive husband, she found shelter in a safe house run by the Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal.
A young sex worker named China sits stunned after being beat up by a client in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Many of the girls who run away from child marriages end up trafficked to brothels where they often face intense violence.
Elsa, 20, waits for customers in the doorway of her home while daughter Senaiet, 5, looks on in
Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. At age 11, Elsa ran away from home the day she was supposed to get married to a neighboring villager. She was later offered a job in a restaurant, but it turned out to be a brothel.
Mejgon weeps in the arms of her case worker near fellow residents at an NGO shelter run by Afghan women in Herat, Afghanistan. Mejgon’s father sold her at the age of 11 to a 60-year- old man for two boxes of heroin.
A teenage newly married Afghan girl hides her face inside her home in rural Takhar province.
Ritu (foreground), 21, and Rupa, 23, enjoy monsoon rains on a roof in Agra, India. Both women are acid attack survivors. A disfiguring and sometimes deadly retributive act generally taken by, or on behalf of, men whose advances the women rejected, acid attacks disfigure hundreds of women and girls in India every year. Formerly a star volleyball player, Ritu was attacked by her cousin. After several reconstructive surgeries, she lost her left eye.
Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar arrests a man who repeatedly stabbed his 15-year- old
wife, Jamila, and mother of two children, for disobeying him. When asked what would happen to the husband for this crime, “Nothing,” Kakar said. “Men are kings here.” Kakar was later killed
by the Taliban.
In a practice known as baad, Bibi Aisha’s father promised her to a Taliban fighter when she was 6 years old as compensation for a killing that a member of her family had committed. She was
married at 16 and subjected to constant abuse. At 18, Bibi Aisha fled the abuse but was caught
by police, jailed and then returned to her family. Her father-in- law, husband and three other family members took her into the mountains, cut off her nose and her ears, and left her to die.
