The Isis handbook for women: Marry at nine

A internally displaced Yazidi girl does the chores in a refugee camp. Many Yazidi women were taken as "wives" for Isis fighters last year. Photo / AP

Girls living under Isis (Islamic State) rule may legitimately be married from as young as nine, and should have a husband before they are 17, according to a semi-official manifesto aimed at winning new recruits.

Their education should continue no later than the age of 15 and "most pure girls will be married by 16 or 17", according to the document published by the all-female al-Khanssaa Brigade's media wing. Most women should lead a sedentary lifestyle within the confines of their homes, it adds.

The document, Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study, was written to attract women from the Gulf region, according to Charlie Winter, a researcher at the counter-extremism think-tank the Quilliam Foundation, who translated it.

The domestic lifestyle it prescribes for women is at odds with that depicted by some Western female recruits on social media, where they have posted pictures of themselves posing with weapons.

"I think that Western women have a motive to recruit other Western women. This document has a motive - recruiting women from the Gulf," Mr Winter told The Independent.

"The reflection that it gives is much closer to reality than what our British girls are saying, for example talking about joining police forces and training for battle."

Educated, professional women have been executed by Isis, the UN said last week, with three female lawyers murdered within Isis-held territory this year.

A report released by the UN on Wednesday also detailed how Isis militants are using children as suicide bombers and human shields. The report, which reviewed the treatment of children across Iraq for the first time since 1998, drew attention to what it said was the "systematic killing of children belonging to religious and ethnic minorities by Isis, including several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive". It said militants were selling some abducted children as sex slaves.

Renate Winter, an expert on juvenile and women's justice, said those communities particularly vulnerable to abuse by the Sunni extremist militants included Yazidis, Christian and Shia Muslims.

- Independent