Women with skin ripped from their bones after setting themselves on fire are being admitted to a specialist hospital in Iraqi Kurdistan as the country experiences a surge in rates of gender-based violence.
War-torn and economically crippled Iraq suffers one of the highest rates of domestic abuse in the world, with the self-governing region of Kurdistan to the north also experiencing a surge in violence against women.
Two years after setting herself alight, Jenan, whose real name has been withheld for her safety, is still bound to a hospital bed where medics tend to the festering wounds lying beneath a suit of bandages.
She says she was driven to the extreme method of suicide known as self-immolation after finding herself trapped in an abusive marriage.
Jenan says her desperate pleas to family and friends fell on deaf ears and she was unable to escape her abuser.
Feeling hopeless, she chose to set herself on fire.
"I cry every night and day because I ask myself why did I do this to myself?," she told the BBC from her hospital bed.
"[...] The hardest thing to do is to try and burn yourself but you don't die."
Jenan said her family situation meant that as a child she was never dreamed of getting a good job, and instead her "only wish was to have a nice home, a good husband, to be happy".
To make matters worse, she claims she was just a child when she was forced to marry.
In June, it was reported that child marriage is on the rise in Iraqi Kurdistan, despite it being illegal for anyone under the age of 18.
The law does, however, leave room for judges to approve marriages to girls as young as 15 in "urgent cases", Kurdish outlet Rudaw reported.
While Kurdistan sees lower rates of child marriage when compared to Iraq as a whole, the numbers are rising and "forced and child marriages still occur" as the "laws are often not enforced", the broadcaster adds.
"Families usually arrange marriages through religious marriage contracts separate from the legal system."
Women are often used as pawns to fill the family's financial coffers, or to settle family debts and feuds.
Women who are sexually assaulted can also be pressured into marrying their rapist to maintain the family's honour, Rudaw addds.
The hospital's head nurse Nigar Marf believes that self-immolation is a victims' final desperate attempt to protest the abuse they suffered.
"Women in our society suffer many mental pressures," she told the BBC.
"They suffer mental and physical abuse. So when they find no relief, they set themselves on fire."
During her 20 years on the ward, Nigar has seen several of her patients die from self-immolation, including girls as young as 16.
"I am angry at our society because they are not aware.
"It's wrong that a 16 or 17-year-old girl would set herself on fire."
The BBC reported that though womens' rights have improved in Iraqi Kurdistan in recent years, there is still a nefarious patriarchal undercurrent that permits and even encourages gender-based violence.
One 16-year-old girl at the hospital, Dunya, claims she burned herself while baking bread.
She says the women she's met in the hospital have had a profound impact on her.
"Many women are admitted in this hospital because her husband or father or brother were not treating them right."
She told the BBC she now wants to become a psychologist dedicated to help women overcome their trauma.
