Afghanistan:
Women Still Not Liberated
Human Rights Watch Report
- Police
Abuse, Forced Chastity Tests, and Taliban-Era Restrictions in Herat
Afghan
women and girls have suffered mounting abuses, harassment and restrictions
of their fundamental human
rights during 2002, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released
today.
The 52-page report, We
Want to Live As Humans: Repression of Women and Girls in Western
Afghanistan, focuses on the increasingly harsh restrictions on women
and girls imposed by Ismail Khan, a local governor in the west of Afghanistan
who receives military and financial assistance from the United States.
Human Rights Watch said that the situation in Herat was symptomatic
of developments across the country, and that women and girls were facing
new restrictions in several other
regions as well.
Many people outside
the country believe that Afghan women and girls have had their rights
restored. Its just not true, said Zama
Coursen-Neff, the co-author of the report and researcher in the
Childrens Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Women and
girls are still being abused, harassed, and threatened all over Afghanistan,
often by government troops and officials.
Human Rights Watch found
that womens and girls rights in Herat had improved since
the fall of the Taliban, noting that many women and girls have been
allowed to return to school and university, and to some jobs. But the
report found that these advances were tempered by growing government
repression of social and political life. Ismail Khan has censored womens
groups, intimidated outspoken women leaders, and sidelined women from
his administration in Herat. Restrictions on the
right to work mean that many women will never be able to use their education.
The Human Rights Watch report
said that the Herat government has even recruited schoolboys to spy
on girls and women and report on so-called un-Islamic behavior.
In some instances, police under Ismail Khans command have questioned
women and girls seen alone with men, even taxi drivers, and arrested
those who are not related. Human Rights Watch said that men caught in
such circumstances are usually taken to jail; women are brought to a
hospital, where police force doctors to conduct medical exams on the
women to determine whether they have had recent sexual intercourse,
or if unmarried, whether they are virgins.
Ismail Khan has created
an atmosphere in which government officials and private individuals
believe they have the right to police every aspect of womens and
girls lives: how they dress, how they get around town, what they
say, said Coursen-Neff. Women and girls in Herat expected
and deserved more when the Taliban were overthrown.
Human Rights Watch said that
problems for women and girls were growing worse in many parts of the
country outside of the capital, Kabul. Throughout 2002, girls
schools in at least five different provinces have been set on fire or
destroyed by rocket attacks.
Human Rights Watch said that
reports from around the country indicate that government troops and
officials regularly target women and girls for abuse, often invoking
vague edicts on dress and social behavior. In many areas, local police
and troops are enforcing Taliban-era restrictions, including banning
music and forcing women and adolescent girls to continue wearing burqas.
Human Rights Watch said that
many of these local forces have received weapons and assistance from
the United States and other countries during 2002. Human Rights Watch
called on all countries involved in Afghanistan to cease military assistance
to local commanders and to coordinate all future aid through Kabuls
central government.
Human Rights Watch urged
the Afghan Transitional Administration in Kabul to prohibit harassment
and abuse targeted at women, and to appoint new civilian governors in
provinces in which serious abuses against women and girls are occurring.
Human Rights Watch also called on the international community to support
the Afghan government in these efforts. It urged international donors
to support the work of Afghan
women, inside and outside of the government, for example, by supporting
womens groups throughout the country.
Human Rights Watch called
on the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to expand human
rights monitoring efforts and to continue efforts to strengthen the
Afghan Human Rights Commission, in order to help protect all Afghans
seeking to speak openly and challenge abusers.
Noting that efforts to improve
security and human rights protection
would require an increased presence of international peacekeepers, Human
Rights Watch urged the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands to
lead efforts to expand international peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan,
which are currently stationed only in the Kabul area. Germany and the
Netherlands will take joint command of the peacekeeping forces in early
2003. Human Rights Watch urged the United States, European Union nations,
and NATO, as well as Pakistan, Iran, and other countries bordering Afghanistan
to contribute logistical and intelligence support necessary for international
peacekeeping to expand.
The U.S.-led coalition
justified the war against the Taliban in part by promising that it would
liberate Afghanistans women and girls, said Coursen-Neff.
In fact, by supporting repressive warlords, the international
community has broken that promise and forsaken womens rights.
The Human Rights Watch report
is the second of two reports on Herat. In November, Human Rights Watch
released a 51-page report, All Our Hopes Are Crushed: Violence
and Repression in Western Afghanistan, documenting abuses by Ismail
Khans forces against political opponents,
detainees and ethnic minorities.
(New York, December 17, 2002)
The report is available at:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/afghnwmn1202/