Locked up

Sudanese women can't get a divorce. Well, unless they commit adultery. But then they're sentenced to jail. In patriarchal southern Sudan, as in much of Africa, only men have the right to file for divorce. The one legal loophole for Sudanese women is to commit adultery, a crime that is instant grounds for divorce. But even then, most husbands refuse to agree to one because they don't want to ask their relatives to return the dowry . . . . So best case scenario reads like some seriously flawed logic: enter violent/bad marriage, commit adultery, go to jail, hope that you've shamed your husband enough that he'll request a divorce, and wait. Trouble is, some women have been waiting for a long time. Like many women in jail for infidelity in Sudan, [Ding Maker] did it because she wanted a divorce. For three months, she has been sitting in a cell with 12 other women, hoping to shame her husband into repaying her dowry and leaving her. "He abused and beat me, never paying for my food or taking care of our sick children," Maker said, adjusting her shiny green shirt over her swelling belly. She is pregnant from the affair, but not worried about it. Luckily, the two decades of civil war that have ravaged the country are coming to a close and a new government is crafting a new constitution that could promote women's human rights and foster peace and equity in a country riddled with conflict and oppressive tradition. But many women have started defying the rules on their own, in part because they became more independent from men during the civil war, and in part because the political liberation of the region has brought new ideas and influences into a tightly controlled tribal society. Virtually all 24 women in Rumbek prison's female ward are there because they defied customary family laws. More than half have been charged with adultery; the rest have been jailed for eloping or failing to follow traditional marriage rules. "With peace and talk of change, adultery and requests for divorce are more frequent than they were ever before," said Chief Justice Ambrose Riny Thiik of South Sudan's Superior Court. "In fact, we're all surprised it's happening already." Thankfully, I'm not that surprised: women have had enough.