KABUL: Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies from pregnancy-related complications. Girls have minimal access to education in many parts of the country and forced marriages are widespread, say rights watchdogs. Women comprise more than half the population of Afghanistan, but they continue to suffer from official neglect and primitive social restrictions in 2005, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has reported.
The commission says it has documented 154 cases of self-immolation by women in the western zone during the year, while in the southern Helmand province, as many as 144 forced marriages and 25 money-for-opium marriages were reported.
The Afghan government’s attempts to curb the cultivation of opium have had an unexpected fallout on women. Desperate farmers, with their poppy fields razed by the government, have been forced to turn to a traditional practice in which a family pays off its debts by handing over a daughter to a relative of the creditor. Another Afghan practice called ‘baad’ has claimed a seven-year-old victim. The girl, whose father had sexually abused a 10-year-old, was given in ‘marriage’ to the victim’s brother. She was used as a slave and sexually abused for two years before she was returned to her family, last year.
Hangama Anwari, a member of the AIHRC, said the victims could not expect any justice from the judicial system. She says the male-dominated courts are biased against women and children. Most investigations by authorities into complaints of violent attacks on women are not given serious attention.
There has been a spurt in cases of attempted suicides and self-immolation by women with hundreds of cases of attempted suicide being reported by police. In mid-January, an 18-year-old burnt herself to death in Omri district. While officials did not have exact details, crime branch chief Wakil Kamyab says he suspected violence and family feud was behind the incident. An upsurge has been reported in cases of forced marriages. In some cases women have killed themselves while trying to escape. “The female self-immolation is unprecedented in the province, “ admits chief of Ghazni Women Affairs Department. “These girls are burning themselves to death because they have no other option in life to escape violence,” says Yakin Erturk, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission for Violence Against Women.
“‘They are committing suicides in order to escape a life full of violence, not only from their husbands or fathers, but sometimes even by mothers-in-law. So being women does not free one from exercising violence unfortunately,” she says.
Ahmad Fahim Hakim, the deputy chairman of the AIHRC, has urged the government to set up offices for registering marriages and divorces and to create family courts to tackle the alarming issue of violence against women. Even educated women are not safe in their homes. In November 2005, poet Nadia Anjuman, 25, a well-known literary figure of Afghanistan, was beaten to death by her husband in Herat.
A 29-year-old, named only as Amina, was dragged out of her parent’s house in Urgu District, Badakhan province by her husband and local officials before being publicly stoned to death. The man accused of committing adultery with her is alleged to have been whipped a 100 times and freed.—By arrangement with The Asianage
