The Pursuit of Gender Justice

In the spring of 2012, members of a militia known as Ansar Dine seized control of Timbuktu, in Mali. The militia, which was working with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, meant to restore “proper” Islam to a city it saw as corrupted by secular influence. It forbade women from wearing jewelry, leaving the house at night, being alone with men other than their husbands, and even from speaking to their own brothers-in-law and cousins. When more than a hundred women gathered to protest the rules, the militants fired shots in the air to disperse them.

The extremist group also required women to cover themselves almost entirely, and to dress in a way that concealed the shape of their bodies. Women and girls who were detained, often for violating the dress code, were at risk of rape. “We couldn’t go out; we couldn’t play or go to school,” a woman named Halimatou, who was fifteen when Ansar Dine invaded, recalled. Like many girls, she was married off to one of its fighters. More than a decade later, she and her family still suffer stigma from that forced marriage.