September 16, 2013 - KABUL, Afghanistan — An unpublished United Nations
report on female police officers in Afghanistan found accounts of pervasive
sexual violence and harassment by their male colleagues, according to Afghan
and Western officials familiar with the report.
The report, which the United Nations has circulated only
among senior Afghan officials at the Interior Ministry, found that about 90
percent of the policewomen interviewed described sexual harassment and sexual
violence as a serious problem, and that about 70 percent of the policewomen
said that they had personally experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence
themselves, according to people who saw the report or had it described to them.
While a much smaller fraction reported either being
raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, the overall picture was of a police
force in which women were constantly at risk.
Although the report has not been made public and was
not made available to The New York Times, two other recent reports touched on
similar problems, though they did not focus as closely on the issue of sexual
assault and harassment.
Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, who stepped down as interior
minister in August, described the United Nations report’s broad outlines, but
questioned its findings. He said that after reading the report he sent a team
to investigate the situation of female police officers and that none of the
women his team spoke to complained of such mistreatment.
“If an Afghan policewoman is being raped or sexually
harassed, they would report that — they wouldn’t keep it secret,” he said.
The chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Seddiq
Seddiqi, said he thought the report had “some exaggeration of the issues and
the problems.”
Both men insisted, however, that the ministry was
committed to improving the situation of policewomen.
The report, according to two people familiar with it,
surveyed nearly 10 percent of the female police force. United Nations officials
would not discuss its details.
“We are working with the ministry on follow-up to the
report and to put in place improvements,” said Georgette Gagnon, the United
Nations director of human rights for Afghanistan.
Few subjects are as taboo in Afghanistan as sexual
behavior, and female victims of sexual attacks are often accused of immorality,
shunned and sometimes jailed.
Women’s rights advocates said that because Afghan
policewomen were afraid of being penalized for revealing the problem, it was
extremely difficult to get them to talk about abuse. That is all the more true
if the person committing the sexual abuse is their commander or one of his
close friends on the police force.
The policewomen interviewed by The Times said they
feared being fired or demoted, or being sent to work in a job that was far away
from their home if they complained.
Most policewomen are low-level security screeners at
checkpoints or government buildings, and in many instances they are the only
person earning money in the family and desperately need their salaries —
usually around $240 per month.
A further disincentive to talking publicly about sexual
abuse or coercion is that many Afghans already believe female police officers
have loose morals simply because they are willing to work in public with men
who are not relatives. If a woman admits that she is under pressure to have
sex, conservative relatives might force her to quit — or even kill her to
expiate the perceived dishonor to the family.
General Patang said he had visited policewomen in all
of the provinces and had never heard a complaint about sexual abuse. Most
mentioned discontent with salaries or a lack of promotions, he said.
“I think the reason they told these things to the U.N.
and did not mention it to my inquiry was that these were mainly illiterate
women who thought they might gain more attention and support by making these
claims,” he said.
The situation for female police officers is made more
difficult because there are so few of them — barely 1 percent of the roughly
155,000-member force.
A policewoman from eastern Afghanistan who spoke on
condition of anonymity said she was the only female of more than 20 people
working at her checkpoint. “I have asked to move, the men are not good there,”
she said.
“They were making bad cheap jokes every time I came in,
and one man was leering at me every day saying, ‘Talk to me, be with me.’ What
should I do?” she said.
Though they questioned the scope of the report’s
findings, Interior Ministry officials said they were trying to improve
conditions for female officers.
“We are currently working seriously to make sure that
the women are happy and women have the best environment to serve their
country,” said Mr. Seddiqi, adding that the new minister, Umar Daudzai, wants
to recruit 10,000 policewomen by the end of 2014. In addition, the ministry
will strive to increase public awareness of the role of female police officers,
Mr. Seddiqi said.
The recruitment goal, while lauded by some, is in many
ways a distraction from the problem. Even reaching the current goal of 5,000
policewomen by 2015 is behind schedule, according to ministry officials. The latest
biannual report to Congress by the Pentagon acknowledged that recruiting
women “will remain a serious challenge.”
Senior ministry officials understand that one way to
decrease the chance of sexual harassment is to have more women in the police
force so that it becomes more normal for them to work alongside men, Mr.
Seddiqi said. Now a number of male commanders simply do not want to fill posts
with women, according to the Pentagon report.
Yet, it is difficult to persuade women to join the
police if they fear they will be at risk of harassment, violence or worse. In
Helmand Province, where there are 30 policewomen, three have been killed since
the beginning of July, including their commander, who died on Monday after being shot in the neck
the day before.
The United Nations report is the third this year that
examines the hardships faced by Afghan policewomen, including their
vulnerability to sexual harassment.
The other reports were conducted by Human Rights Watch
and Oxfam.
The Human Rights Watch report examined the lack of female toilets and
designated changing rooms, which the report contended increased women’s
exposure to abuse.
The Oxfam report focused on the tiny number of female police officers, and emphasized that the absence of policewomen also harms Afghan women because they suffer from high rates of domestic violence. Afghan women would be more likely to discuss such violence with another woman, since they fear that a man might not believe them or, worse, return them to the family where the abuse took place.