Self-immolations up

last updated 8 January 2015

Herat, Afghanistan

Teenage girls in western Afghanistan are increasingly taking the most desperate way out of arranged marriages: setting themselves on fire. Doctors at one hospital in Herat told the Los Angeles Times that they see at least three self-immolations a week by girls who have become engaged against their will, often to older men who already have a wife. In a typical case, a 14-year-old doused herself with gasoline and lit a match after her father forced her to marry a 60-year-old. Since the fall of the Taliban, conditions have improved for women in Afghanistan, but progress is slow. Many of the burn victims are girls who were raised as refugees in Iran, where women have more rights, and returned home to find intolerable restrictions on their freedom.