Norge stoppet bryllupet til Thea! http://t.co/SMyv5WBzzn #stoppbryllupet pic.twitter.com/irOXdbX7Sh

— Plan Norge (@PlanNorge) October 11, 2014

 

Thea from Norway is barely a teenager, yet her parents have decided to marry her off to 37-year-old Geir. Thea’s written a blog, documenting all her experiences up to the wedding day.

German photographer Ann-Christine Woehrl has taken pictures of women who survived acid attacks – and discovered extraordinary strength.

Acid attacks in several Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan have been plaguing women for a very long time. In fact, even men have sometimes fallen prey to obsessed lovers who use this method to take revenge. Here is a repost of an older Women Talk Online report in which an acid attack survivor, Sonali Mukherjee, spoke to Samrah Fatima about her experiences.

Please share…Jhanvi missing since 29 Sep 2014 from India Gate…#Jhanvi #bringBackJhanvi pic.twitter.com/Cu7AFaJLSV

— Richa Khurana (@richa_khurana) October 4, 2014

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon on September 28 in New Delhi, when little Jhanvi went missing from India Gate, a popular meeting place in central Delhi. The initial nightmare eventually gave way to a massive social media campaign that helped find the toddler nearly a week later.

Since the December 16 gang rape incident in Delhi, the attention that sexual violence has received from the Indian public and authorities has been a welcome change. However, such recognition should not come at the cost of ignoring other forms of violence that may seem to be less scandalous and, in fact, “normal.” The recent UNICEF report on violence against children does precisely this. It blows the lid off a camouflaged and under-discussed aspect of the issue: “hidden” violence.

An acid attack victim in Balochistan. Copyright: A. Ghani Kakar.

Women in Pakistan’s troubled province Baluchistan are fearful after a spate of attacks that targeted women going out without male family members.

Copyright: picture-alliance/Erik Schottstaedt

“Often trafficking victims don’t even know that there is a label to describe what happened to them,” says Luis CdeBaca Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons from the US State Department.

There are several souvenir shops at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi where tourists can buy books and models of the Taj Mahal and autorickshaws as souvenirs of their trip to the subcontinent. The Kamasutra, the ancient Sanskrit guide to sexual behavior,