Forcing Women to Marry Their Rapists

A 16 year-old Moroccan girl named Amina Filali killed herself recently by drinking rat poison after being forced to marry her rapist.  According to extensive press reporting, Amina was raped by a 26 year-old man and eventually informed her family two months later.  In many parts of the Islamic world (which spans from North Africa to Southeast Asia), a raped woman is considered dirty and a dishonor to their family.  At best, a victim of rape cannot find a husband, and at worst, she faces murder (sometimes at the hands of their own male relatives).

In this case, Section 475 of the Moroccan Penal Code allows men who commit crimes against young women to be pardoned from their prison sentences (and any form of justice) if the victim and her parents allow her to marry the perpetrator.  If you watch the Al Jazeera video in this posting, you will see that Amina's parents claim the judge handling the complaint they filed against the rapist basically told them they had to pursue the marriage option.  According to Amina's mother, after marrying the man who raped her, she was mistreated and beaten by her husband and his family until she ultimately decided to commit suicide.



While Morocco is unquestionably one of the more progressive countries in the Islamic world, this case has drawn a massive amount of public outrage from women's rights activists in Morocco and around the world.  Unfortunately, this type of situation is not limited to North Africa, in fact, women being forced to marry their rapists is common a third of the world away in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where women frequently attempt to commit suicide after being forced (or sold) into violent and abusive marriages from which they have no ability to escape.

The CBS news video embedded below is a story about a 19 year-old Afghan woman named Gulnaz who was allegedly raped by her cousin's husband.  She initially did not report the rape as the consequences for her doing so were severe (including the possibility of being shunned or even killed by her family).  However, when she learned she was pregnant, she had no choice but to report it.  Despite the fact she reported she was raped, she and the attacker were both prosecuted for having sex outside of marriage.  She was sentenced to 12 years in prison for allegedly having consensual sex with a man she was not married to.  Later, when the Afghan Government accepted that she had been raped, it reduced her sentence to 3 years and changed the charge to not reporting the rape expeditiously.  She was also reportedly given the option of marrying her attacker to legitimize her child and gain her release from prison.  How the story ends is so bizarre and twisted that I won't even bother to try and summarize it here.  Just watch the video...




Obviously, this type of "justice" is absurd, ignorant, immoral, etc.  It is 2012.  While cultural sensitivity and political correctness are en vogue, the world also has to do its part to defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves.  This is not meant to be a diatribe against Islam or any culture or country in particular.  For every outrageous story I could list here about some similar absurdity, I can also list things being done by people in the same countries to address the situation (frequently at great personal risk to themselves).  I am talking about acts such as the protests in Morocco about this story, the people who allowed CBS to do the story about Gulnaz (or Gulnaz herself), the heroism of a Pashtun woman dancing on the second season of Afghan Idol (even though she received death threats for doing so), women in Saudi Arabia driving under the threat of arrest, or dozens of other examples that are reported in the news daily.  We all just need to do our part to support them when and where we can.  Which is why I decided to write this blog.

Here are some more links if you are interested.  Please let me know what you think of the post.

Al Arabiya Article With a Picture of Amina's Rapist/Husband
Amina Falali Facebook Page (In French but interesting)
Saudi Women Suing For the Right to Drive
Setara Dances on Afghan Star

What The Heck is Sorghum Anyway???

"I wouldn't recognize sorghum if it was stuck to my shoe!"

- Abu Haroun, March 2012

The U.S. helps support the daily feeding of tens of millions of people worldwide...many of whom would die without the help.  Some of the food we provide costs less than $1,200 per metric ton!

This week, I learned a lot about the Food For Peace (FFP) program which is implemented by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  Each year, the U.S. spends around $1.8 billion on food aid to help the hungry and malnourished around the world.  One common myth is that the U.S. Government purchases excess agricultural commodities from American farmers and then gives them away overseas.  In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture actually buys the commodities off the same market as companies do and then provides it to USAID to send overseas.  In that respect, it is not a subsidy program for American farmers.  On the other hand, the international food aid program is funded by the Farm Bill which otherwise has nothing to do with international relations, diplomacy, or the State Department.  Its largest proponents are American farmers and millers, NGOs that distribute the food, and the U.S. shipping industry.  The Farm Bill requires that 75% of the commodities be milled and bagged in the U.S. and that the majority of the commodities be transported using U.S. shipping companies.

Trucks lined up to drop off food commodities at the WFP Warehouse in Kabul, Afghanistan

The U.S. Government does not directly distribute the goods overseas, instead it works through international NGOs and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).  The U.S. also does not ship sandwiches, or candy bars, or other forms of finished foods.  Instead we ship various types of flour and grains, rice, beans, powdered milk, peas, lentils, and vegetable oil.  These commodities are either shipped in huge bags which are packed in the U.S. or are literally dumped into the hold of massive ocean liners and bagged once they arrive at their destination.  Once the items arrive they are transported to huge warehouses where they are then stored until they are ready to be distributed.

Just one of several massive warehouses full of food in Kabul maintained by WFP

In addition to the bulk items described above, the U.S. also provides specialized food for mothers, infants, and young children at high risk for malnutrition.  These include some specialized corn-soy and wheat-soy blends as well as fortified cooking oil with added nutrients specifically for pregnant and nursing women, infants, and young children.

Vitamin A fortified cooking oil

One great program the U.S. sponsors around the world is called Food for Education.  In these programs, families who allow their young children to attend school full-time for a month receive a tin of fortified cooking oil like the one in the picture above.  In many countries, this has significantly increased child nutrition and also ensured that girls are allowed to stay in school even during periods of economic distress.  One of the saddest things I learned is that 25,000 children die daily of severe malnutrition.  The great news is that the U.S. also provides Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) which are small toothpaste sized packages containing miracle food for severely malnourished children.  Each packet contains 1,000 calories worth of tasty paste containing the most important vitamins and minerals malnourished kids need.  As long as the child is strong enough to eat, two packets a day can reverse severe malnutrition in a month or so.

RUTF for malnourished children donated to WFP by the people of Japan

So one question that comes to my mind is:  what the heck do people do with a 100 pound bag of flour provided by the people of the US?  People dealing with natural disasters, refugees, and displaced persons generally don't have a robust kitchen or access to quality food (or they wouldn't be eating bags of flour).  Generally, if they have access to clean water and a heat source, they can convert the flour into porridge or breads which can be eaten to provide valuable nutrition.  After seeing thousands of bags of various types of flour stacked up in different places around the world, I was curious how to cook with it.

Lots of flour!

I chose to cook with sorghum flour since according to the U.S. Grains Council it is the third largest cereal crop in the US and our country is the #1 exporter of the commodity worldwide (link below if you must know more about sorghum).  If you are not a recipient of U.S. food aid or on some sort of special diet, you probably don't know that there is an aisle at Whole Foods dedicated to special flours like sorghum.  So I went to the store and bought some!

Sorghum flour from Whole Foods ($3.50)

I enlisted the help of my daughter and we decided to cook using the only ingredients that people in an emergency situation were likely to have:  flour, water, and salt.  We used the cookbook for sorghum flour provided by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) which was broken out by country and explains how to prepare meals using sorghum flour.  The link is below if you want to experiment yourself.  Since we were not in the mood for porridge and we already knew how to make pancakes we went with that option first.

Adding water to the flour

Flour, water, and salt mixed by hand into a ball

Dough flattened on a flour covered surface

Cooked on a hot surface with a bit of oil

The first piece of sorghum flour bread/pancake was fairly dry and flavorless (possibly bordering on bitter).  We ate it with a bit of water and it was fine.  While it was certainly not anything I would order at a restaurant it would certainly do the job if I was starving.  So we decided to deviate slightly (cheat) from the original constraints and decided to crush a banana into the next batch and even dropped about 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar in.  While the U.S. does not supply sugar (or tea or chocolate) as international food aid, other countries do, so we figured a bit of sugar would be OK.

Adding a banana and a bit of sugar

We cooked the second batch of sorghum flour pancakes and were pleasantly surprised!  They actually tasted pretty good and they were very filling. 

My sous-chef happily eating the second batch

The more I learn about the food assistance the more impressed I am.  It is a logistically nightmarish scenario to get food to the folks who need it; however, the effort results in saving millions of lives per year including preventing children from literally dying from hunger.

Here are some links with additional information if you are interested:

U.N. World Food Programme Web Site
Information on Child Malnutrition

More information on lifesaving RUTF for severely malnourished children

All about sorghum

U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization Sorghum Cookbook