KABUL -- 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.

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.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

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More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Reuters and NBC's Atia Abawi contributed to this report.

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Married at the age of 8. That fact alone is hard to fathom. It's even more difficult to stomach when you think of the resulting forced sex, physical abuse and early pregnancies that often result. But for girls in more than 50 countries in the developing world, and for a minority in the developed world, this is their reality. The reality of child marriage.

Stephanie Sinclair / VIl

Faiz, 40, and Ghulam, 11, sit in her home prior to their wedding in the rural Damarda Village, Afghanistan on Sept. 11, 2005. Ghulam said she is sad to be getting engaged as she wanted to be a teacher.

Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair has been documenting this issue around the world since 2003. A large body of her work was published last year in National Geographic.

We asked Sinclair to tell us more about her reporting:

How did you come up with this story idea and how long have you been reporting it?
This project began in 2003, after I met several girls in Herat, Afghanistan who had attempted suicide by self-immolation. I noticed that many of the girls who had set themselves on fire had been married at very young ages, in many cases prepubescent. It was the first time I’d ever encountered anyone who had been married so young. This phenomenon seemed to link many of these girls and this intense act of desperation. I couldn’t help but feel a responsibility to research and document whatever it was that would make these girls take such drastic measures. The resulting project has taken almost a decade to date, and I am still working on the issue. What makes it so complicated is its prevalence in more than 50 countries worldwide. To document it properly, one needs to address the many cultural reasons behind the issue as well as the differing impacts on the varying societies.

How many different countries did you travel to for this story, and how did you gain access to these sensitive stories and events?
I have documented this issue in Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Ethiopia and Yemen. Access has always been incredibly difficult for several reasons. The most obvious obstacle is that parents and families innately know that what they are doing can harm their children. But they continue this harmful traditional practice because they may feel societal pressures, have concerns for their safety and well being should they remain unmarried, or may even need to simply sell their girls in a desperate move to feed their other children. Fortunately, almost every image in this project was done with the help of the locals living within these societies. They wanted this issue to get support so they could be further empowered to combat child marriage. Those people were key in helping me gain access, and telling these stories would have been impossible without them.

Stephanie Sinclair / VII

Nujood Ali was ten when she fled her abusive, much older husband and took a taxi to the courthouse in Sanaa, Yemen. The girl's courageous act and the landmark legal battle that ensued turned her into an international heroine for women's rights. Now divorced, she is back home with her family and attending school again.

What is most disturbing to you about child marriage and what would you most like people to know about it?
There are many disturbing factors related to child marriage. But I think the thing that we must acknowledge is that in most cases these young children do not want to be married. They want normal lives — to play with their friends, be educated and have a full adolescence. These marriages rob many girls of their innocence, many times before puberty, and this is something that as a global society we cannot tolerate. The bottom line is child marriage isn't just harmful to the girls involved. It's at the root of so many other societal ills: poverty, disease, maternal mortality, infant mortality, violence against women. All of those are symptoms connected to the same problem: child marriage. If you solve the child marriage problem, these other issues benefit as well.

Is there a solution?
A multifaceted approach is needed to address the issue of child marriage. In fact, yesterday Sec. Hillary Clinton announced a USAID-sponsored pilot program in Bangladesh that will work with religious leaders, media, local governments and NGOs to foster community support for an end to child marriage. However education is still the single most protective factor against this practice. This means keeping the children in school as long as possible, as well as educating the communities about its harmful impact on the health of their girls, their grandchildren, as well as their societies as a whole. 

I also strongly believe there is not just a need for awareness-raising and prevention work, but we must find ways to help these girls who are already in these marriages — be it through giving financial incentives to their families to let them stay in school, or vocational training so they can have more say in their lives and households. Quality medical treatment is also needed for girls who are giving birth at these young ages. These girls need long-term solutions. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. But there seems to be a growing  movement aimed at ending child marriage. In fact, at yesterday's State Department announcement, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of The Elders, announced a very ambitious goal: to end the practice by 2030. If this issue remains a global priority, I'm optimistic that we can meet that deadline.

To mark the first inaugural International Day of the Girl Child on October 11, 2012, the United Nations Population Fund will partner with VII Photo to host an exhibition at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to present the personal narrative of the girls themselves. The hope is that their stories, presented in photography and video productions by Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock, will renew global attention toward this critical issue and accountability across the international community. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will be among many prominent figures attending the opening.

• Follow the campaign at Too Young to Wed and tooyoungtowed.wordpress.com
• See additional images from Sinclair's project and read more about child marriage at National Geographic Magazine
• View a video including interviews with some of the child brides at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• Read 'In Niger, child marriage on rise due to hunger' in PhotoBlog

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Jerome Delay / AP

Sarey Amadou, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Even though the boy she had a crush on offered a dowry for her, her father insisted that she marry her first cousin, who lives several hours away in the larger village of Guidan Roumdji. Even during the best of times, one out of every three girls in Niger marries before her 15th birthday, a rate of child marriage among the highest in the world, according to a UNICEF survey. Now this custom is being layered on top of a crisis. At times of severe drought, parents pushed to the wall by poverty and hunger are marrying their daughters at even younger ages. A girl married off is one less mouth to feed, and the dowry money she brings in goes to feed others.

"Families are using child marriage, as an alternative, as a survival strategy to the food insecurity," says Djanabou Mahonde, UNICEF's chief child protection officer in Niger.

This drought-prone country of 16 million is so short on food that it is ranked dead last by international aid organization Save the Children in the percentage of children receiving a "minimum acceptable diet."

-- Reported by the Associated Press

Read the full story.

Jerome Delay / AP

Children help prepare the evening meal in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 21. In Hawkantaki, it is the rhythm of the land that shapes the cycle of life and crucially, when they marry their daughters.

Jerome Delay / AP

Young girls stand in a field of millet outside the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19. In a normal year, the green shoots vaulted out of the ground and rose as high as 13 feet, a wall tall enough to conceal an adult man. This time, they only reached the waist.

Jerome Delay / AP

Rama, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. Her mother says she is 12. Her husband brought a 100,000 francs ($200) dowry for her in the fall of 2011. Although her mother denies that poverty played a role in precipitating the marriage, Rama says her family would normally have waited at least one more year. "It's because the rainy season was not good that I was married off, and because we are very poor."

Jerome Delay / AP

Children play in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.

Jerome Delay / AP

Shoubalee Lawali, 15, from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kintee, Niger, July 19. Her husband is in his mid-20s. She was taken to his village, Kintee, where she now lives with him. "My father has three wives and 23 kids. There are lots of problems at home. I think it was for this reason that they married me."Last year, before the start of the harvest, there were 10 girls in Hawkantaki between the ages of 11 and 15. By spring 2012, seven were married, and another two are engaged.

Jerome Delay / AP

Elders gather for prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. In Niger, the legal age of marriage is 15. The law, however, only applies for civil ceremonies officiated by the state.

Jerome Delay / AP

A man and a boy exit after prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18.

Jerome Delay / AP

Sadiya Oumarou, 15, originally from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Tabouka, Niger, July 19. Sadiya was the first of the girls to be married, leaving Hawkantaki for the village of Tabouka last year. One by one, her girlfriends were all married off except one. Like the others, she did not have her period when she became a new bride.

Jerome Delay / AP

Children walk in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger.

Jerome Delay / AP

Aicha, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kaihi, Niger, July 20. Originally from Hawkantaki, Aicha has been married for seven months.

Jerome Delay / AP

Young girls stare at a visitor in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.

Jerome Delay / AP

Marliya, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Marliya's family was paid just 50,000 francs ($100) for her dowry. Her father used up the money long before her wedding, and she was sent to her husband's home with only a tarp to sleep on.

Jerome Delay / AP

Young women walk past a group of men recharging their cell phones under a tree in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20.

Jerome Delay / AP

Zali Idy, 12, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger. Zali was married in 2011. In January 2012, soon after she turned 12, she was carried on a bullock cart to her 23-year-old husband's home.

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