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Violence against Afghan women hinders development
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Widespread violence against Afghan women, including rape, is the subject of a newly issued United Nations report. The report addresses violence against women within the context of both the impunity of the perpetrators of such violence, and the failure of authorities to protect women’s rights. The report focuses on two principal issues – the “growing trend” of violence and threats against women in public life, and rape and sexual violence, creating a situation where "women and girls are at risk of rape in their homes, their communities and in detention facilities.”
The future of Afghanistan's political, social, and economic development are linked to issues of violence against women, including rape, said United Nations Special Representative Kai Eide on Wednesday. The report, “Silence is Violence: End the Abuse of Women in Afghanistan,” was published jointly by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
When it comes to sexual violence, the report states that rape is both widespread and taboo, and that victims are more likely to be punished than the perpetrators. “Only in a few isolated cases have public institutions taken appropriate action. In many instances, victims seeking help and justice are further victimized… Government action to address rape is woefully inadequate,” said Special Representative Eide. The joint report focuses on both violence that inhibits the participation of women in public life and sexual violence in the context of rape. The goal of the joint report is to help Afghanistan confront issues relating to women’s rights as the country strives to recover from more than three decades of armed conflict.
Rapists in Afghanistan too often get away with their crime, while the survivors of rape lack access to justice and experience stigma and shame. The report details numerous attacks on girls’ schools, and on girl students – including gas and acid attacks – by “anti-government elements.” The report also addresses so-called “honor” killings, the exchange of women and girls as a form of dispute resolution, trafficking and abduction, early and forced marriages, and domestic violence.
There is no explicit provision in the 1976 Afghan Penal Code criminalizing rape, and a survey of convicted rapists in one Afghan prison suggest that they did not know that rape was a criminal offense. In addition, police and judicial officials are often not aware or convinced that rape is a serious criminal offense, the report states.
Afghan women participating in almost all sectors of public life, including parliamentarians, civil servants and journalists, “have been targeted by anti-government elements, by local traditional and religious power-holders, by their own families and communities, and in some instances by government authorities,” says the report.
As the ranking United Nations official in Afghanistan, Eide advocated for national and community leaders to vigorously address violence against women and not leave such responsibility to human rights activists or women alone. “The problem isn’t that violence against women is being condoned. It’s not,” said Eide. “The problem is that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned. And that has implications both for countless individual victims and for the country’s future development.”
The joint United Nations report “paints a detailed and deeply disturbing picture of the situation facing many Afghan women today,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said. “The limited space that opened up for Afghan women following the demise of the Taliban regime in 2001 is under sustained attack, not just by the Taliban themselves, but by deeply ingrained cultural practices and customs, and – despite a number of significant advances in terms of the creation of new legislation and institutions – by a chronic failure at all levels of government to advance the protection of women’s rights in Afghanistan.” Pillay added, “the silence surrounding the widely-known problem of violence against the girls and women of Afghanistan must be broken.”
Some traditional practices also serve to blur rape as a crime. Inter-clan or inter-family disputes are sometimes eased or resolved by a suspected rapist being married off to his victim as a form of social cover-up. `Baad', the practice of handing over a girl from one's own family to placate an aggrieved party, could provide cover for rapists: The suspected rapist or his family clears his alleged crime by giving a girl to one of the sons of the victim's family. More importantly, the justice system appears to be inadequate.
While not unique to Afghanistan, the joint report found that allegations of rape are under-reported, in part due to the shame attached to survivors of rape. “Afghanistan is clearly in need of a determined effort to address such violence and its associated problems,” said Eide. “We stand ready to help, but this is not something that can be imposed upon society from outside. It has to come from the community and I hope the recommendations in this report will be taken as a starting point.” The report presents evidence that "in some areas, alleged or convicted rapists are, or have links to, powerful commanders, members of illegal armed groups, or criminal gangs, as well as powerful individuals whose influence protects them from arrest and prosecution."
Norah Niland, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights representative in Afghanistan, said shame and stigma were attached to rape victims rather than to the perpetrators. Rapists have often managed to evade prosecution and punishment because Afghan law, the penal code and other civil laws lack clarity on the crime. "There is an urgent need to criminalize rape in Afghan laws," said Niland who also heads the human rights unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
"When a victim of rape goes to the police for justice, the police rape her again and say 'she is a whore' but they never say `whore' to a rapist," said Sima Samar, chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Women in Afghanistan are subject to numerous other forms of physical and psychological violence apart from rape or sexual violence, and are frequently deprived of their basic human rights, according to the report. "There is a dramatic and urgent need for the government of Afghanistan and society to question attitudes to rape, the larger problem of violence against women, and their complicity in a crime that destroys the life of numerous victims," said the report.
The High Commissioner stressed that the Government has a duty to eradicate these practices, by making them illegal, educating its population and demonstrating leadership and commitment to safeguard the rights of all Afghan women and girls.
The joint United Nations report was dedicated to the memory of Sitara Achakzai, a Kandahar Provincial Council member, who was killed on April 12, 2009, after testifying on the situation of women in Afghanistan at a hearing to compile supporting evidence for the joint report. Qari Yousef Ahmedi, a Taliban spokesperson, claimed responsibility for the murder.
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