EVERY WIDOW, EVERY MISSING GIRL, EVERY HALF-WIDOW TELLS A STORY THAT DEFIES SILENCE AND DEMANDS OUR ATTENTION.

When the world speaks about Kashmir, it often speaks through the language of borders, security and politics. But hidden beneath these debates are the lives of women and girls who continue to disappear into fear, poverty, traffcking and silence. Their suffering is not temporary. It has stretched across generations, turning grief into a permanent condition.

The conflict has already left devastating scars on Kashmiri society. Since 1989, nearly 22,991 women have been widowed and 108,007 children orphaned. Reports also document around 11,269 cases of molestation or gang rape and between 8,000 to 10,000 enforced disappearances. Almost 45% of the adult population suffers from mental distress, with women carrying the deepest psychological burden. Behind these figures are mothers
raising children alone, daughters growing up without safety and women forced to survive inside uncertainty. Among the cruelest realities is the condition of “half widows.”

Between 1,500 to 2,000 women continue to wait for husbands who disappeared years ago but were never legally declared dead. They live trapped between hope and mourning, denied emotional closure, legal rights and economic stability. Many spend decades searching police stations, hospitals and prisons for answers that never arrive.

Human rights reports have repeatedly documented this suffering. Structures of Violence (2015), co-authored by Khurram Parvez of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, recorded 1,080 extrajudicial killings and 172 enforced disappearances, exposing patterns of systemic impunity. Angana Chatterji’s Buried Evidence(2009) uncovered 2,700 unmarked graves and over 2,900 bodies across 55 villages, many bearing signs of torture.

Dr. Bashir Ahmad Dabla’s A Sociological Study of Widows & Orphans in Kashmir (2016) estimated 32,400 widows and 97,200 orphans struggling with trauma, poverty and insecurity. Yet another crisis now shadows Kashmiri women: trafficking and disappearances. An International Labour Organization report published in 2017 estimated that more than 40 million people globally live under modern slavery, while 89 million experienced
trafficking in the preceding five years.

Out of these, 25 million were trapped in forced labour and 15 million forced into marriages without consent, including 5.7 million children. In Jammu and Kashmir, this danger has intensified sharply. NCRB data shows human trafficking in the region increased by 15.56% in 2022–2023 compared to 2021–2022. In 2024 alone, 60 trafficking victims were offcially recorded. Forced labour, coerced marriages and sexual exploitation remain major drivers. Women are often lured through false promises of employment and later subjected to abuse, underpayment and exploitation. Reports also show women from West Bengal being trafficked into Jammu and Kashmir and forcibly married.

The scale of disappearances is equally alarming. The Government of India informed Parliament that between 2019 and 2021, a total of 9,765 women went missing in Jammu and Kashmir. This included 1,148 girls below 18 years and 8,617 adult women. In 2019 alone, 355 girls and 2,738 women disappeared. In 2020, the figures stood at 350 girls and 2,701 women. By 2021, the numbers rose further to 443 girls and 3,178 women. Compared to
the nearly 3,300 missing women cases recorded between 2016 and 2018, this marks an almost threefold increase.

These are not merely statistics. They are daughters who never returned home, mothers searching endlessly and families destroyed by fear. Kashmir’s women continue to endure conflict, displacement, exploitation and silence. Their pain demands more than sympathy. It demands justice, accountability and the courage of the international community to stop looking away
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