WUNRN
Human
rights report from
Ottawa — The
Canadian Press Published on Wednesday, January 06,
2010
Murray Brewster
More Afghan women are choosing suicide to escape the
violence and brutality of their daily lives, says a new human-rights report
prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department.
The 2008 annual assessment paints a grim picture
of a country where violence against women and girls is common, despite rising
public awareness among Afghans and international condemnation.
“Self-immolation is being used by increasing
numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances, and women
constitute the majority of Afghan suicides,” said the report, completed in
November 2009.
The document was obtained by The Canadian Press
under the Access to Information Act.
The director of a burn unit at a hospital in the
relatively peaceful province of Herat reported that in 2008 more than 80 women
tried to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire, many of them in their
early 20s.
Many of those women died, the report said.
The frank evaluation of the plight of women was
written against the backdrop of international debate last year over the
Afghanistan government's so-called rape law.
The legislation, aimed at courting votes in the
minority Shiite community, legalized rape within a marriage. It prompted
outrage in Canada and many other countries.
The move was an attempt to codify social and
religious practises, but the international condemnation forced the government
to review the law. It was eventually enacted with some amendments, although the
basic tenets remained unchanged.
“Rape is widely believed to be a frequent
occurrence, though its true extent is concealed by under-reporting owing to the
social stigma attached to it,” says the 31-page, partly censored document.
The Afghan practice of “honour killings” has been
cited as a major problem by both the Canadian Foreign Affairs Department and
the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights
Commission said it has “recorded 76 cases of honour killings in 2008, but the
actual number is believed by local embassies and NGOs [non-governmental
organizations] to be much higher.”
A Calgary-based group, Canadian Women for Women in
Afghanistan, said Ottawa needs to put more emphasis on the issue as the country
approaches the 2011 deadline for the withdrawal of troops.
“Human rights are human rights for a reason. They
belong to everyone and they shouldn't be denied to half of the population,”
said Penny Christensen, the organization's treasurer.
“As Canadians we have a moral and ethical
responsibility to support the women of Afghanistan.”
She credited the Canadian government for placing
special emphasis on improving the lives of women with a series of programs, but
said it needs to further encourage the development of Afghan civil society.
The fact the Afghan constitution mandates the
participation of women in the country's parliament should be taken as a sign
that the situation is not hopeless, Ms. Christensen said.
A British study, cited in the Foreign Affairs
report, said 87 per cent of Afghan women complained that they were the victims
of violence, half of it sexual.
“The report added that 60 per cent of marriages
are forced, and 57 per cent of marriages involve girls under the age of 16. Due
to both social norms and lack of access to justice, women rarely report
widespread abuse against them, particularly rape or sexual abuse.”
And there are few places victims can go to escape
abuse.
“Some women escaping from domestic violence can
only find shelter in prisons, although the creation of women's shelters in some
parts of the country now provides an alternative.”
There are only 19 women's shelters in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government has sometimes been ambivalent
about domestic violence, on the one hand condemning sexual abuse, particularly
rape, but then backtracking in some high-profile cases.
President Hamid Karzai personally condemned the
August 2008 rape of a 12-year-old girl in Sari Pul province, saying rapists
should “face the country's most severe punishment.”
But in a separate case he pardoned two men
convicted of gang-raping a woman in Samangan province.
The Afghan government has created special police
task forces staffed by female officers to investigate family violence and
crimes against children.
But the report notes those female officers often
complain they're not allowed to do outreach and must wait for victims to show
up at the police station.
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