Women In Afghanistan: Violation Of Women Rights

Women in school and working have been a big topic when mentioning Afghanistan. Unfortunately, Afghanistan does not recognize that women should work nor get an education, although Article 43 of the Afghan Constitutions claim that women have the right to education. Barin Sultani Haymon, previous consultant of Women’s Regional Network and Afghan National, interviewed nearly 150 Afghan women to discuss their life in Afghanistan in which she shared her experience with The Independent, a newspaper from the UK, and said, “Many of those I spoke to explained that girls are still banned from going to school under threat of death, much as it was back in the old days before the defeat of Taliban in 2001. A number of schools have been destroyed to make sure. More than a dozen girls’ schools have been shut for the past four years in Zurmat district of Paktia province.” (Haymon, 2018) The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UMAMA) has also brought up the topic of armed groups banning girls from education, where, according to Amnesty “In February, threats forced the closure of girls’ schools in several villages in Farah province, temporarily denying education to more than 3,500 girls. When the schools reopened 10 days later, the vast majority of the girls were initially afraid to return.” (Amnesty, 2017) Due to the restriction of education, 87 percent of Afghan women cannot read or write and up to two thirds do not have an education. (Bohn, 2018) Paragraph 2 A heavy topic regarding women in Afghanistan is also the failure to protect women from any kind of violence. A large number of women has experience sexual abuse in Afghanistan where most of them occur in their own home by their husband. 

A law was established in 2009 called the Shia Family Law, where those women who belong to the Shia religion have no choice but to accept the sexual desires of their man, even though they do not want to perform in any sexual activities. In the Human Rights Watch, Heather Barr, a senior researcher at Women’s Right Division, discussed the violence against women being ignored by the government and said, “UN researchers reviewed 237 cases of women and girls who sought justice […] authorities routinely turned victims away or referred them to – and pressured them to accept – mediation. Mediation is used – in clear violation of the EVAW Law – even when women suffered crimes such as rape, acid attacks, and forced prostitution.” And “The UN also reviewed 280 murders of women, including so-called “honor killings.” Only 50 cases led to convictions, and the vast majority were never heard by the courts; some of these cases were likely resolved through mediation.” Honour killings is when a victim of rape’s family members resolves in killing the victim as they have brought shame to the entire family. Barr continues by talking about a girl named “Soraya”, who was stabbed by her boyfriend with a knife and proceeds to get raped by her father-in-law. When she went to the police to seek justice, they told her it was family matters and it should be solved between them without the legal authority’s intervention. (Barr, 2018)