In Kyrgyzstan, a young woman is abducted roughly every 40 minutes. ‘Ala kachuu’ is the name for the tradition dating from nomadic times. The old custom is becoming more and more common. Women are being kidnapped and forced to marry.

Sometimes the perpetrators know their victims. Sometimes they just choose a woman they saw on the street at random. Many of the women’s mothers also experienced this, and now they expect their daughters to submit to the same ordeal.

Report by Kerstin Palzer / Katja Kuznetsova

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WTO RECOMMENDS

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