Another brave soul

Sometimes a small incident in one part of the world can affect people in many other parts of the world. Same is the case with Sahar Gul, an Afghan teenage girl, and her life after she was married to a member of the Afghan army when she was only 13. Gul's story was brought into light after she insisted CNN on publicizing her name and story to the world. According to Gul, after being married to an army official, she was raped and locked in the basement for months for the 'crime' of not getting pregnant immediately. There she was tortured, electrified and burned, and finally forced into prostitution by her in-laws for "failing her obligation as a woman."

Now after becoming an international symbol of the women's rights struggle in Afghanistan, Gul has opened our eyes to one of the many struggles young girls and women go through every day in countries without laws for women's rights or weak law system. This is due to their lack of education and awareness about their rights on the global level.

Gul's case is one of the hundreds of thousands of child marriages around the world, especially in developing countries. This is a serious issue and the governments need to take a stand in order to save the lives of not only the little girls who are married off at tender ages, but also their offspring that grow up in the same environment making this a vicious cycle

Here is Gul's interview after she was saved from her in-laws by the neighbors:  (Tortured Afghan teen on attackers, CNN, 2012).