WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - NUMBER OF WOMEN JAILED
FOR FLEEING ABUSE, SOARS
More women imprisoned for 'moral
crimes' as fears grow that hard-won rights are at risk as western troops head
home.
Women demonstrate
in
By Emma Graham-Harrison
- 21 May 2013
The number of Afghan women jailed
for fleeing forced and abusive marriages, and other "moral crimes",
has soared since 2011, according to Human Rights Watch.
About 600 women and girls are in
prison for offences including running away from their husband or family, even
though fleeing abuse is not a crime under Afghan law. Eighteen months ago, 400
women were being held for such "crimes", the rights group said,
quoting figures from the ministry of interior, which runs the country's jails.
The report was released days after Afghanistan's
parliament failed to pass a landmark law protecting women from violence,
because religious conservatives rejected key provisions, including a minimum
marriage age of 16 for girls.
There are growing concerns that
hard-won rights for women are under threat as western troops head home, taking
with them much of the scrutiny and some of the funds that have helped support
progress since the fall of the Taliban over a decade ago.
More than half of Afghanistan's female
prisoners are in jail for "moral crimes", and their
numbers are rising faster than the overall numbers of women in detention,
despite a shaky legal basis for many of their sentences.
Prisoners interviewed by HRW said
the women had fled their homes in a bid to escape abuse, including underage
marriage, beatings, stabbings, burnings and forced prostitution. Often they
were subjected to unscientific virginity tests after their arrest, which the
report said amounted to a cruel and degrading form of sexual assault.
Running away is not illegal under
the Afghan criminal code, but the country's supreme court has ordered the
prosecution of women who flee their families. Senior government officials have
confirmed it is not a crime but those views have not translated into policy,
HRW said, calling on the president to free all women jailed for leaving home.
Rape
victims are also imprisoned for "forced adultery" because sex outside
marriage is a crime in
In all but a handful of the cases
there was no investigation of the abuse that prompted the women to flee, while
prosecution or punishment were even rarer.
"Twelve years after Taliban
rule, women are still imprisoned for being victims of forced marriage, domestic
violence, and rape," said Brad Adams,
One bright spot is a modest
increase in the number of shelters for abused women since 2011, but there still
are none in conservative southern
The Afghan government is
ambivalent at best about the shelters, which the justice minister denounced as
little more than brothels, and has shown no sign it is willing to pay for them.
"
A landmark law for the
elimination of violence against women, enacted by presidential decree in 2009
but never ratified by parliament, was put to a vote last week by women's rights
advocates who hoped to strengthen it with a popular debate ahead of a change of
leadership next year.
The law bans more than 20 forms
of violence against women, including child marriage, forced marriage, buying
and selling women for marriage, giving away women to settle disputes and forced
self-immolation.
But after bitter debates over
issues such as enforcing a minimum marriage age, which religious conservatives
said was un-Islamic, the legislation was shelved indefinitely. The United
Nations called on the government to ensure that this "critical" law
was implemented.