Afghan Outlook reports, as many do, on the recent UN report - ‘A Long Way To Go’ - on the implementation of the EVAW (Elimination of Violence Against Women) law in Afghanistan.
This is a law - only two years old - that criminalises violence against women and children, forced marriage and marriage to settle disputes as well as forced self-immolation. Before this law, there was no specific legal basis for police to bring cases against these crimes.
So how well has the law been used? At the UN press conference I attended yesterday, the spokespeople plus Afghan womens rights tried to put a positive spin on the fact that, at least in some cases, the law was being used to prosecute cases. But, the facts are pretty grim. Of 2,229 cases of violence against women (and that’s only the cases that were reported), only 4% eventually came to court under the law.
Folks, that includes murder, rape (of children as well), forced prostitution and self-immolation through family pressure.
A recent case that has found much publicity is one of an Afghan women forced to marry her rapist or face 12 years in prison. This CNN piece takes a look at the story, while Jerome Starkey from The Times has brought to light that a documentary about her has been ‘censored’ by the EU, apparently for the safety of the woman in question.
Steffan de Mistura, the senior UN representative in Afghanistan said that women’s rights would be the legacy of the international effort in Afghanistan, but apart from in the most urban centres (and often not even here), women find it hard to exercise even basic rights like leaving the house or sending their daughters to school. Sure, more girls are in school now than ever, but that’s because it was outright banned during the Taliban times and now a lot of money and effort is going into making sure girls are in school.
Women’s issues are always tricky in Afghanistan, because you’re treading on the toes of deeply held cultural pride. Women are property to many and you’re not going to change that attitude in a few years.
There are some very brave, very clever Afghan women leading advocacy groups like Women for Afghan Women or Young Women for Change. The latter led the widely publicised march through Kabul against street harassment that I blogged about last July and, recently, one of the founders has blogged about at the New York Times.
But they face great problems, even from the government, who recently tried to shut down all privately run women’s shelters, calling them ‘brothels’. In fact, the government run shelters are little more than prisons, where women running away from abuse can often expect to be charged with ‘moral crimes’ (including rape being considered adultery) or, even worse, being handed back to their abusers.
It’s the tendency in Afghan culture to mediate. Afghans are great negotiators and diplomats and keeping the peace in a community often takes priority. It’s understandable in a country where discord has led to tragedy, war and genocide.
But often the sacrificial lamb at the centre of mediation are women and children - bought and sold to resolve these disputes. A two-year-old law passed by a weak and distant government and implemented by nobody in distant rural areas is unlikely to change this.
Read the report here (downloads PDF file).
