E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSKABUL -- The United Nations on Tuesday joined mounting criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government over women's rights, urging it to enforce a law designed to prevent violence against women.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a report that the country still had a long way to go in implementing a law enacted to eliminate violence against women.
The legislation made child marriage, forced marriage, forced self-immolation and other violent acts, including rape, a criminal offense.
The 2009 law came law came after years of lobbying by Afghans and Westerners alike, and was held up as a beacon of progress.
EXCLUSIVE: US, NATO behind 'insecurity' in Afghanistan, Karzai says
"Progress in addressing violence against women will be limited until the … law is applied more widely," Georgette Gagnon, director of UNAMA's human rights unit, told a news conference after the release of the report.
"So we are calling on the Afghan authorities to take much greater steps to both facilitate reporting of incidents of violence against women and actually open investigations and take on prosecutions," she added.
Afghan women are increasingly concerned for their future as the deadline looms for most NATO-led combat troops to leave by the end of 2014.
They have won back basic rights in voting, education and work since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. But some female lawmakers and rights groups say abuse against women is on the rise as Karzai's government tries to advance the reconciliation process with the Taliban, an allegation it denies.
Newlywed beheaded for her refusal to become a prostitute
On Monday, unknown gunmen shot dead Nadia Sediqqi, acting head of the women's affairs department in eastern Laghman province as she was going to work, in an attack widely condemned by the international community.
Watch Atia Abawi's full, exclusive interview with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in which he discusses the "growing perception" that insecurity in the region is caused by the United States and some of its allies who "promoted lawlessness" and "corruption" in Afghanistan.
She had replaced Hanifa Safi, who was killed in a bomb attack five months earlier.
"We have educated women who are being locked inside houses," teacher Masooda Jan, 35, said. "I wish that those women who are locked in their homes by their families and are tortured and beaten would be rescued."
After 10 years of Karzai's rule, has life improved in Afghanistan?
Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan politician, told NBC News that Afghan women's suffering is twofold. At home, their husbands keep the women away from education and don't give them permission to go out for work.
Internationally, laws to protect women do exist, but she argues that they are mostly symbolic and never implemented.
Afghan women's groups had expressed concern that without international backing, it would be difficult to press for their rights.
UNAMA spokeswoman Nilab Mobarez told NBC News that there are more cases going through the courts and judiciary systems than in the past but violence against women remains under reported.
"We have a long way to go to for full implementation of the law," Mobarez said.
/
More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.
Reuters and NBC's Atia Abawi contributed to this report.
More world stories from NBC News:
- Analysis: Egypt is rapidly approaching its own 'cliff'
- Nelson Mandela suffers recurrence of lung infection
- Banking giant HSBC to pay record $1.9 billion in money-laundering case
- Suspect in US envoy's killing in Libya arrested in Egypt
- Parents: US Marine detained in Mexico for bringing shotgun across border
- Cuba's jailing of American contractor 'arbitrary,' UN panel concludes
- Nearly 900 left missing by Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines
- Video: Penguins in Tokyo take over as Santa’s elves
Leave a Comment:
it would be easier to convince them to become pork farmers; their religion treats women as a possession, can not understand how we do not see what we are up against?
The level of violence is obviously going to be very high in a country that is in a low state of open warfare already, and which hasn't had a stable government in at least decade. It's not clear to me whether violence against women is any higher than violence against people in general. I mean, this is a country where bombs routinely go off in marketplaces...
It may be just a matter of which victims the media wants to emphasize. Women's "rights" is very much in vogue right now. A story about abuse of the elderly, the overweight, the blind, the insane, probably doesn't have the same selling power....
Karzai is a drug peddler. He is so willing to blame the infidel for everything. He is too afraid to stand up to the injustices being done to the women in his country. The only way to change this horrible place is to separate the men from the women and since that is not going to happen the women will continue to be victimized. Sometimes death is better than living with such brutal men.
Jezzzzzzz!. Why is everybody all up in arms about women's rights in Afcrapistan. Just as soon as the ISF leaves it will return to caveman rules. The Afghan's want it that way. Clinton, Pelosi and other fem ultra liberals really think they can dictate to the Neanderthals in Afcrapistan on how they should treat women. The Afghans have been treating their women the same way much longer than the 1960's women libbers have existed. I would really like to watch Hillary and Nancy, all their liberal females friends and lesbians go toe to toe with the men of the tribes in the mountains of afcrapistan. That would be a beat down I would pay to watch and I'm not taking away anything from Hillary because she is probably a scrapper, but Pelosi would definitely fold like a wet napkin.
Doesn't the UN realize that what they are asking is against the Koran. You know, that book US Soldiers got in trouble for burning. Make up your minds will you?
The United Nation should not call for Afghanistan to protect women from rape, force marriage etc. It is too late now. They should have called the US and NATO not to attack on Afghanistan, and should have discussed it with them find alternate/other ways for solving the problems. If they were attacking on Afghanistan, they should have discussed that to whom should be given power to? To old warlords or to the people of Afghanistan? But unfortunately the blind Bush and NATO supported the old warlords and gave them power. Those warlord who had killed tens of thousands innocent people during 1992-1996 civil wars. Only more than 60000 people were killed by warlords in less than three months only in Kabul. They of people of Afghanistan paid very high price to eliminate discharge them from power.
My question is where UN was at that time, or at the time of Bush Admisntration while they were attacking on Afghanistan. At least the UN could tell them “Please do not bring warlord into power again”
Now, we see violence, raping, torturing against people in Afghanistan, it is because of those warlords that are in power. They are repeating their old actions as they were doing it during civil wars. If any rapes, killing, murdering, kidnapping, smuggling happen, nobody can do it, except warlords.
Since, 2001 till now, how many innocent people got killed Afghanistan? How many Taliban got killed in Afghanistan? How many US and
NATO forces got killed in Afghanistan?
But none of the Warlords got killed, if they were to kill or captured Taliban’s leaders, they should have also killed or captured the warlords, so these problems would not occur.
In short as long as Afghanistan has that corrupted government and warlords in power, Afghanistan will be getting worse and worse.
The UN now expects the sand monkeys of Afghanistan to start listening to their attempts to control every government, every custom, every religion in the world. Afghans have typically ignored the UN, so there will be absolutely no change.
Somebody needs to clue Rice in on this...or better yet, somebody needs to tell Obama. This disaster has his fingerprints all over it. Too late for damage control. Well, he can always deny it ever happened.