By: aAhmad Masoud
On 17 January 2016, Mohammad Khan, 25, knocked down his 20-years-old wife, Riza Gul, and cut off her nose with a knife in northern Afghan province of Faryab.
“On that day my husband entered the house with a pistol in his one hand and a knife in his other,” said Riza Gul who was in pain and talking with difficulties to reporters in a local hospital in Maimana, the provincial capital of the northern Afghan province of Faryab.
“First he opened fire at me, but thank God that the bullets missed me; then he got closer, knocked me down and mutilated my nose with a knife,” said Gul who was then flown to Kabul for better treatment and possible reconstructive surgery later on in Turkey.
Riza Gul, who married Mohammad Khan about six years ago, told the reporters that she had an unhappy life with her husband who was used to handcuff and beat her up without any obvious reason.
The status of women in Afghanistan has been deteriorating at an alarming rate and this is despite the fact that millions of dollars have been spent in the past several years to promote women’s rights, stop gender based violence and to create a healthy, safer and secure environment for women to live and work.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is of the view that insult, humiliation, rape, arbitrary or summary punishment and murder of women has increased and weak governance, weakness of law enforcement agencies, lack of security and lack of rule of law in districts and remote provinces have contributed to continuation and worsening of the situation.
“In the first half of 1394 (21 March 2015 to 21 March 2016), AIHRC has registered 2,579 cases of violence against women while in the first six months of 1393 this figure was about 2,403,” AIHRC said in a report. This figure indicates 7.32 percent increase in the number of violence cases against women.
According to AIHRC, 900 verbal and psychological violence cases come first, 731 physical violence cases come second while 550 economic violence cases come third. Other violence cases which include forced and early marriages, Bad, expulsion from home and the denial of the right to education with a total of 215 reported cases come fourth. During this period, AIHRC says, a total of 183 cases of sexual violence have also been reported.
“In the first six months of 1394 as many as 190 women’s and girls’ murder cases have been documented in the regional and provincial offices of AIHRC,” said the AIHRC report,“and the perpetrators of only 51 murder cases have been arrested.”
Afghan experts believe that the actual number of women and girls murder cases is much higher and usually remain unreported, because the overall majority of people in Afghanistan do not have confidence in the judicial system. People in Afghanistan “rated the judiciary as the most corrupt institution in the country.”
Widespread Corruption:
Transparency International, in a report released early this year, named Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan as the most corrupt countries in the world. According to Transparency International, judicial decisions [in Afghanistan] frequently appear biased in favour of government and parliament and there are allegations of government officials, politicians and other powerful figures blocking police investigation involving their associates.
“The overall result: a dysfunctional justice system in which corruption largely goes unpunished, and those with power enjoy impunity,” says Transparency international.
“Afghanistan urgently needs strong and independent institutions, free from political influence, with genuine capacity to prevent and prosecute corruption,” says Srirak Plipat, Regional Director for Asia Pacific, Transparency International.
The Cultural Barriers and Security:
In a traditionally male dominant society such as Afghanistan, the males usually justify gender-based violence and consider it acceptable. The results of a research, conducted recently by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) in collaboration with the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), indicate that the majority of the respondents agreed that gender-based violence, although not right, is justifiable when women resist men’s decision.
“There is a general acceptance that women are not capable of making decisions regarding marriage, with mature respondents showing a higher inclination to believe this notion, particularly in Afghan eastern province of Nangrahar,” said the results of the research which was conducted with an aim “to achieve an in-depth understanding of different notions of being a man in Afghanistan and how they contribute to gender inequality.”
Meanwhile, generally Afghan women keep domestic violence to themselves and do not intend to disclose what they experience at the hands of their husbands, mother-in-laws or the rest of the in-laws.
According to a national report on domestic abuse in Afghanistan, prepared by Global Rights in 2008, approximately 87 per cent of Afghan women experience at least one form of either physical, sexual, or psychological violence, and 62 per cent experience at least two.
So far domestic violence studies have mainly focused at husbands or male members of society and looked down at the violence caused by mother-in-laws or sister-in-laws, particularly in certain parts of the country. Plenty of instances indicate that many newly married girls experience violence at the hands of their mother-in-laws and sister-in-laws. It has been reported that many mother-in-laws usually try to retain their dominance at home by forcing their daughter-in-laws to act as a servant and take over responsibility for carrying out all sorts of house works without the support of other family members.
The types of the violence the newly married girls suffer at the hands of their mother-in-laws include beating, deprivation of maintaining any sorts of contacts with their siblings and parents, home detention, preventing them from going out and even receiving medical treatments for their severe conditions.
“I know of at least one recent case when a young woman, who was ill for the past two or three years, recently died,” a resident of Paktika province said in a condition of anonymity, “she died because she was not allowed by her in-laws to visit a hospital or a doctor to receive medical treatments and instead she was given home remedies.”
Furthermore, the deteriorating security situation in the country has also contributed to worsening situation of gender-based violence. Late last year, the Taliban stoned to death Rukhshana, 19, for escaping forced marriage in Afghan western province of Ghore.
“Taliban brutally stoned Rukhshana to death in front of my eyes,” said Rukhshana’s mother, Hanifa, “I will never forget her cries.”
The bereaved mother said that her daughter was stoned to death without any crime and her innocent cries will always add to her pains.
The Need for Consistent and Coordinated Efforts:
For more than a decade, dozens of national and international organizations and the government of Afghanistan have spent millions of dollars to improve the status of women in war-turn Afghanistan, but without significant achievements.
According to AIHRC, the social, political, economic and cultural rights of women in Afghanistan have not improved, the level of violence against women has increased and legal cases related to violence against women have not yielded any result in the courts of justice.
Improving the status of women in a traditional society such as Afghanistan requires long-term coherent commitments with a holistic multidimensional gender-focused approach aimed at empowering women and bringing about social, political and economic changes. Promoting women’s rights through public education, fighting corruption, ensuring social justice, making education available to everyone wherever possible, and creating healthy work environments and job opportunities for women should lie at the heart of such an approach.
Any such an intervention calls for an effective coordination mechanism to avoid the duplication of efforts, ensure consistent and gender-focused activities in due course of time in accordance with the action plan and budget. Of course, such an intervention is in need of the involvement of different ministries, national and international organizations, UN agencies, civil society organizations, the women’s and youths’ networks and naturally the communities.
Now the question is who should take the lead? The possible answer is, of course, the government of Afghanistan. But does the government have the required capacity and accountability? Well that is another story.
Interventions and Achievements:
According the UNFPA Afghanistan website, to support gender-based violence survivors accessing the law and knowing about their rights, the Ministry of Public Health, with the technical support of UNFPA and with the funding support of the Government of Republic of Korea, Italian Development Cooperation and the Government of Canada, established the Family Protection Centres (FPC).
“Family Protection Centre is a service hub located in hospital in which victim is safe, less restricted in mobility, not exposed to additional risk, providing psychosocial and trauma counselling, medical treatment, information on options of services, basic legal assistance, liaising with necessary services and referrals to legal actors such as the Family Response Unit of the Ministry of Interior Affairs or Department of Women’s Affairs of Ministry of Women’s Affairs,” the website says.
“Only one year after their establishment,” says the website, “around 1,430 women and girls had the opportunity to discreetly report violence, receive care and be referred to further services through six Family Protection Centres located in health care facilities in Kabul, Nangrahar, Herat, Balkh, Bamiyan and Baghlan [provinces].”
In December 2015, the British Embassy in Kabul and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched a new collaboration with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health to expand access to services for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV).
According to the UNFPA website, these centres are expected to help up to 6,000 women survivors every year. This new collaboration was announced in the presence of His Excellency the Minister of Public Health Dr. Ferozudin Feroz, as well as representatives of civil society, donors and UN agencies.
“Violence against women is pervasive and the level of forms of violence differs from one province to another. We recognize that the health sector has a big role to play in responding to gender-based violence,” stated Dr. Ferozedin Feroz, “I welcome this project with much optimism, would go a long way in increasing access and utilization of gender-based violence response services.”
“The UK will provide around $1.4m worth of assistance this year. And we plan to allocate further, substantial funding next year as well. Violence against women and girls is a global problem. It not only harms the victims and their families. It also has huge social and economic costs. So ending violence against wives, mothers and daughters is not only a compelling moral issue – but needs to be a political imperative as well. That is why it is such a priority for my Government, as well as for the Government here,” said British Deputy Ambassador Dr Martin Longden.

