Double rape for Yazidi victims of IS as Kurdistan officials force women to undergo two-finger virginity test

After being raped by members of the Islamic State (IS), female victims experience again another form of sexual violence in the form of forced virginity tests made by Kurdistan officials on Yazidi women to confirm their claim of sexual molestation. Unfortunately, it is not scientific methods used by the Kurds but a crude way of checking if the woman’s hymen is still intact.

According too Human Rights Watch (HRW), Iraqi courts required the conduct of the two-finger virginity test as proof of the victim’s claim of being raped by the IS. Rotna Begum, HRW researcher of the group’s Women’s Rights Division, points out that even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that virginity tests lack scientific validity and ineffective in determining if a woman has been raped or not, reports News.com.au.

The test involves a doctor inserting two fingers into the woman’s genital to feel the hymen, a thin membrane which some cultures believe is intact until the woman had sexual intercourse. The test could be painful or humiliating or degrading for women, points out Laurence McCullough, ethics and health policy researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He says, “There is no net clinical benefit and (a) preventable risk of biopsychosocial harm.”

Begum explains, “They are based on a commonly held but inaccurate belief that all women and girls who are virgins have intact hymens that bleed on first intercourse.” She adds that the virginity test worsens the trauma experienced by the victims in the hands of the IS which in fatwas, or religious rulings, uncovered recently by American soldiers who killed recently IS officer Abu Sayyaf, permitted the rape of female captives.

However, following the furor over the tests, the committee that is collating evidence of the crimes of IS says it has stopped mandating the virginity tests for former sex slaves of the jihadists. The HRW says the committee instead used a new medical examination report on sexual violence that was recommended by the UN.

Bugam reveals that Judge Ayman Bamerny, head of the committee, told her colleague that the test on Yazidi women have been stopped, reports HRW.

Besides the Yazidi women, female applicants to Indonesia’s police force are also required to pass a virginity test as well as would-be brides in Georgia.