Human Rights of Afghan Women in Jeopardy

[Shiloh]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7977293.stm

Afghan 'anti-women law' attacked

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been urged by the UN and Western aid agencies to abolish a new law that they say legalises rape within marriage.

They say that the law - signed by the president last month - limits the rights of women from the Shia minority.

A UN spokeswoman in Kabul told the BBC that it was seriously concerned about the potential impact of the law.

Aides to President Karzai insist that the new law has been introduced to provide more protection for Shia women.

'Disastrous'

But human rights activists say that the new law reverses many of the freedoms won by Afghan women in the seven years since the Taleban were driven from power.

They say it removes the right of women to refuse their husbands sex, unless they are ill.

Women will also need to get permission from their husbands if they want to leave their homes, unless there is an emergency.

Soraya Sobhrang from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission campaigned against the law. She has criticised long-standing Western silence over the issue which she said had been "disastrous for women's rights in Afghanistan".

"This law legalises all violence which happens against women in Afghanistan," she told the BBC. "They will lose their rights we have in our constitution."

The law covers members of Afghanistan's Shia minority, who make up 10% of the population.

It was rushed through parliament in February and has now been approved by President Hamid Karzai.

But the BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says that the final version has not yet been made public, and the president has not yet commented on it.

The law was backed by influential Shia clerics, and Shia political parties.

Defenders of the law say it is an improvement on the customary laws which normally decide family matters.

But critics like Member of Parliament Fawzia Koofi have accused the president of playing for votes.

"We have elections coming up in the summer and President Karzai's dependency on these fundamentalist groups is growing - and also he wants to have the support of the extremist Shia groups."

A separate family law for the Sunni majority is now also being drawn up. Activists fear that this too might be used to roll back Afghan women's hard-won freedoms.

A spokeswoman for the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) in Kabul told the BBC a "studied approach" is now required to determine the exact content of the new law.

"Unifem-Afghanistan remains seriously concerned about the potential impact of this law on the women of Afghanistan," the spokeswoman said.

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Human Rights of Afghan Women in Jeopardy

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Afghan+women+betrayed/1458975/story.html

Afghan women betrayed
Karzai courts votes of conservative Shia clerics by endorsing repressive family law
By JANET BAGNALL, The GazetteApril 3, 2009 6:57 AM

After five years of being hounded, beaten and denied their basic human rights by the Taliban, the women of Afghanistan should have been able to count on the support of the man who replaced them, the country's current leader, President Hamid Karzai.

After all as part of the deal for being put into power in 2001 by the West, Karzai vowed to build a modern state in which women were guaranteed equal rights.

He did keep his promise, briefly. Afghanistan's post-Taliban constitution guaranteed equal rights to men and women.

But in his seven years as the head of Afghanistan's government, Karzai failed to consolidate power and now fears defeat. As this year's presidential election closes in - it's scheduled for August - Karzai is chasing swing votes. Most of those votes, regrettably for the women of Afghanistan, are under the control of the country's most retrograde, conservative men, Shia clerics and the leaders of the Hazara minority.

The Afghan constitution was written to leave a foothold for the Shias. A religious minority making up about 10 per cent of the population, Shias are constitutionally allowed to have a separate family law. Shia clerics made it clear to Karzai, reports say, that their support depended on rolling back women's rights to allow them to impose their version of family law.

Karzai is reported to have already signed a law acceding to their every demand: Rape within marriage is legalized. Women are banned from leaving their homes without their husbands' permission. They cannot work, go to school or see a doctor unless their husbands agree. Only men - fathers and grandfathers - will be given custody of children. These measures are in direct contravention of the international accords Afghanistan has signed, and of the constitution itself.

Shinkai Zahine Karokhail, a female MP, told The Guardian the law was pushed through the Afghan parliament with almost no debate. She said, "They wanted to pass it almost like a secret negotiation. There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn't want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election."

A second Afghan politician, Senator Humaira Namati, also told the Guardian that the new law was "worse than during the Taliban." She also described an atmosphere of intimidation during the limited debate, saying, "Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam."

Shia clerics protested that the new law was not as bad as its critics have made it out to be, saying that women can leave their homes in an "emergency." This is a concept that requires definition.

Who can forget the schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia whom religious police refused to allow to escape their burning school because they were not wearing the headscarves and long dresses required to appear in public? The religious police viewed "improper" clothing as more of an emergency than a school in flames. Fourteen girls died in the fire.

The outrage directed at Karzai from around the world represents the one silver lining in this story of treachery at the highest political level.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters, "Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "We will continue to work to protect human rights, especially for women and girls. Women should be free to work, teach and live without oppression and fear."

In Canada, it was a clean sweep among political parties "Making progress on human rights for women is a significant component of the international engagement in Afghanistan," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in London. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff called the law "unacceptable" and NDP leader Jack Layton asked the government to re-evaluate its support for the Afghan government.

And now what? We all disapprove. Karzai cares only about getting re-elected and we care about rooting out terrorists. Unfortunately, for both those purposes, the women of Afghanistan are - and will likely remain - non-essential.

Until this law was passed, Afghan Shia women could have simply waited until August and voted Karzai out of power. In the 2004 election, women brushed past threats and violence to register to vote. They made up 41 per cent of the more than 8.2 million voters.

This is the true tragedy: Having known freedom, women will once again be locked up, powerless to change their fate.

jbagnall@thegazette.canwest.com

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: Human Rights of Afghan Women in Jeopardy

Thanks for posting Shiloh.

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Human Rights of Afghan Women in Jeopardy

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512556,00.html

Afghan President Back Tracks on Law Legalizing Rape in Marriage
Saturday, April 04, 2009

KABUL ? Responding to criticism from around the world, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that a new law that critics say makes it legal for men to rape their wives will be studied and possibly sent back to parliament for review.

Karzai said he ordered the Justice Ministry to review the law, and if anything in it contravenes the country's constitution or Shariah law, "measures will be taken."

The law, signed by Karzai last month, is intended to regulate family life inside Afghanistan's Shiite community, which makes up 10 percent to 20 percent of the country's 30 million people.

But the United Nations Development Fund for Women has said the law "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband."

The United States has urged Karzai to review the law, and Karzai said he has spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about it. Canadian officials have also criticized the legislation.

One of the law's most controversial articles legislates the frequency of sexual relations between Shiite husbands and wives. Article 132 says the husband has a right to sex every fourth night unless the wife is ill.

Karzai did not mention Article 132 during a news conference Saturday. But he said he had studied the law earlier in the day and that "I don't see any problems with it."

He complained that Western media outlets had mistranslated it. He read an article of the law during the news conference that appears to restrict Shiite women's right to leave their homes, though Karzai underscored a provision that allows women to leave in emergencies.

Still, he said the law should be reviewed in consultation with scholars and religious leaders.

"I ordered the justice minister to review the law, and if there is anything that would contravene the country's constitution or Shariah law or the freedom our constitution gives to Afghan women, without any doubt there will be changes in it, and again it will be sent to the parliament of Afghanistan," he said. "Measures will be taken."

The issue of women's rights is a source of tension between the country's conservative establishment and more liberal members of society. The Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 banned women from appearing in public without a body-covering burqa and a male escort from her family.

Now, millions of girls attend school and many women own businesses. Of 351 parliamentarians, 89 are women.

But in the staunchly conservative country, critics fear those gains could easily be reversed. Fawzia Kufi, a lawmaker who opposed the legislation, said this week that the law undermines all advances for Afghan women in the last seven years.

In the latest Afghan violence, a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan on Saturday killed a service member from the NATO-led force. No other details, including the service member's nationality, were released.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said that coalition and Afghan forces killed 20 militants during a series of operations in the Kajaki region of Helmand province on Friday.

A U.S. statement said the forces were patrolling in a "known Taliban stronghold" when they were ambushed with gunfire and mortars. The combined forces responded with gunfire and airstrikes, killing 20 insurgents, it said.

Friday's fighting was the latest in a string of battles in Kajaki, a region controlled by militants that produces much of Afghanistan's illegal opium poppies, the main ingredient of heroin.

The U.S. said fighting around Kajaki on Wednesday killed 20 militants, and fighting there on Tuesday killed 31 militants.

U.S. commanders have said they expect violence in Afghanistan to spike this year as 21,000 new U.S. forces arrive in the country to battle an increasingly bloody Taliban insurgency. The U.S. already has a record 38,000 troops in the country. President Barack Obama has promised to increase the U.S. focus on Afghanistan as he draws down troops from Iraq.