Telling the Real Story

Aisha was just 12 years old when her father was killed in a violent land dispute in Mogadishu, Somalia. Not yet an adult, Aisha had already suffered so much—the loss of a parent, displacement, child marriage, and back-breaking labour

When Muna, an Eritrean refugee, left Sudan with her husband and children four years ago, they believed they were leaving their troubles behind, but it proved to be just the beginning. Driving through the desert in Libya, they were kidnapped by bandits, and held for nearly two years by different traffickers, a period Muna recalls with horror. “Beatings, murder, rape, and starvation,” she says. “They make you hate your life. They make you lose your will to live.”

At home in Nigeria, Caroline worked as house help. She had grown up an orphan, but after a fight in the village, she fled what little family remained to her. In town, she met a man who told her his sister had a supermarket in Europe and could arrange a good job for her there.

Najma* was just 15 when she became pregnant. She was living in Qoryooley, a town in Somalia’s southern Lower Shabelle region that was, at the time, under the control of Islamist insurgents from Al-Shabaab. The jihadists were known to stone unmarried pregnant women to death, but Najma’s life was not at risk from them alone.