WUNRN
Afghanistan - Husband, 60, Wife, 8 + Gender Rights Overview
By Rebecca Murray
KABUL,
Dec 29, 2011 (IPS) - Activists voice concern that Afghan women’s rights
continue to be marginalised, and nowhere is gender inequality more starkly
illustrated than in the country’s flawed justice system.
Yasmin’s
case is one. Although the legal age for female marriage is 16 years, she was
only 8 when her family, in a remote area of Nangarhar province, arranged
her marriage to a 60-year-old man. After four unhappy years, Yasmin fled with a
man she was in love with from her village.
When the
couple was arrested for running away and marrying again, she was pregnant.
Having her baby in prison, Yasmin has since been released. She has moved to a
"The
first step we are planning for her is to get a divorce - she is 18 and has that
right," says Huma Safi, programme manager for Women for Afghan Women, an
organisation that provides female shelters, legal and family counseling.
"The second step is to arrange a proper marriage with the second husband
who she loves. This marriage will decrease her husband’s sentence also. Then
she will go and live with him."
When the
second Bonn Conference on
The
priorities of Bonn II, within the context of a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal
of international coalition forces, is the security transition, peace talks with
the Taliban and future regional relationships.
The World
Bank has warned of
Selay Gaffar
from the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a national coalition of women’s
organisations, had just three minutes at the conference to urge continued
support of women’s rights. Bonn II’s concluding statement briefly linked gender
equality to the Afghan constitution in governance and with peace negotiations.
Female activists
have made an impact raising awareness of gender rights, and improving access to
education and healthcare, mostly in urban areas. Women’s shelters have also
been established, including for those released from prisons and now stigmatised
from returning home, but the women in them say they don’t feel safe or have
freedom of movement.
Despite
these advances, a Thompson-Reuters poll released in June 2011 ranked
"From
2001 to about 2003 there was a lot of attention on women’s rights, and then it
decreased," says Huma Safi. "Our main concern is that we don’t want
to go back to the situation we had 15 years ago. Not only during the Taliban,
but also before the Taliban.
"During
the Mujahedeen’s civil war a lot of women were raped," she explains.
"People then were so tired from war and we were forgotten by the
international community."
On the eve
of Bonn II, President Hamid Karzai pardoned Gulnaz, a 21-year-old rape victim
sentenced by an Afghan court for adultery, who bore a child in prison from the
rape.
But the
presidential pardon in the high-profile case of was an anomaly; the majority of
the roughly 700 women in
"There
are two main types of cases, with plenty of variation, you hear over and over
again," explains Heather Barr, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
"One is usually young girls about to be forced into a marriage against
their will who run away to avoid it. Sometimes on their own, or sometimes with
a man who helps them, but not who they are romantically involved with.
"Another
category are women who have married someone almost always against their will,
and there is abuse at home," she says. "Usually physical abuse,
sometimes just cruelty, and they run away. These often turn into zina cases
because there might be a man accompanying them."
Barr says
that while all the women she interviewed had defence attorneys, the quality of
representation appeared poor, and the trials lack investigation and proof.
"Sometimes a man manages to bribe his way out, but the woman does
not," she adds.
"Zina
is in the penal code, but running away is not. When I talked with judges or
lawyers about this, they say that by running away the woman are at risk for
zina."
A large part
of the population still relies on traditional mechanisms within communities to
resolve disputes outside of the formal court system, Human Rights Watch says.
In 2009
President Karzai signed the Shia Family Law, which included provisions for
14-year-old girls to marry, and for married men to forcibly have sex with their
wives. After an outcry by civil society and the international community, the
Shia legislation has been amended.
The same year,
the Afghan government enacted the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW)
law which criminalised acts like early or forced marriage and rape.
A United
Nations analysis of its implementation last month says, "Judicial
officials in many parts of the country have begun to use the law – but its use
represents a very small percentage of how the government addresses cases of
violence against women."
Female
victims like Zuhra continue to get blamed. Living in
"We got
her a divorce, but now she wants to marry again. We are trying to make her
understand she has time, there is no rush," says Huma Safi. "I cannot
blame her when you are out of prison, the only option they are thinking is if
you have a husband you are protected."
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