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Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes'

Human Rights Watch — 2013-05-21T16:26:54Z

(Kabul) – The Afghan government should take urgent steps to halt an alarming increase in women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said today. Commitments by senior government officials to end such abuses have had little practical impact.

Statistics from Afghanistan's Interior Ministry indicate that the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan had risen to about 600 in May 2013 from 400 in October 2011 – a 50 percent increase in a year and a half. Since October 2011, there has been an almost 30 percent increase overall in the number of women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan's prisons and juvenile detention facilities.

“Four years after the adoption of a law on violence against women and twelve years after Taliban rule, women are still imprisoned for being victims of forced marriage, domestic violence, and rape,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The Afghan government needs to get tough on abusers of women, and stop blaming women who are crime victims.”

In a March 2012 report, “‘I Had to Run Away': The Imprisonment of Women and Girls for ‘Moral Crimes' in Afghanistan,” Human Rights Watch documented that some 95 percent of girls and 50 percent of women imprisoned in Afghanistan were accused of the “moral crimes” of “running away” from home or zina (sex outside of marriage).

These “moral crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriages or domestic violence. Women and girls imprisoned on “moral crimes” charges who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses including forced and underage marriage below age 16, beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, forced prostitution, kidnapping, and threats of “honor killing.” Virtually none of the cases had led even to an investigation of the abuse, let alone prosecution or punishment.

“Running away,” or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, but the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals. Zina is a crime under Afghan law, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina after being raped or forced into prostitution. Prosecution of women who are survivors of gender-based violence has continued, and many abusers of women have continued to go free in spite of Afghanistan's 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law), which created new criminal penalties for abuse of women.

While several high-level Afghan government officials, including from the police and Justice Ministry, have in the past year publicly confirmed that “running away” is not a crime under Afghan law, such statements have yet to translate into policy, Human Rights Watch said. Some legal experts have suggested that a growing view that women and girls should not be charged with “running away” has merely resulted in a shift toward charging them with attempted zina. A charge of attempted zina unjustifiably assumes that women outside of the supervision of their male relatives must have attempted to have sex.

Women and girls accused of “moral crimes” are routinely subjected to “virginity tests” that courts rely on for the purpose of determining virginity and whether a woman or girl engaged in recent sexual intercourse. These exams can be ordered by any police official, and some women are subjected to multiple vaginal exams without informed consent for no justifiable reason. Use of such examinations is not limited to rape cases, and examinations do not focus on documenting medical injuries or collecting physical evidence to support an allegation of sexual assault. Although medical examinations can be a legitimate form of investigation in cases of alleged sexual assault, gynecological exams that purport to determine “virginity” have no medical accuracy. Use of such tests constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.

“Coerced ‘virginity' examinations are a form of sexual assault,” Adams said. “Afghan police, without any scientific basis, are routinely forcing these unspeakable examinations on women and girls.”

Some women and girls who flee violence at home are able to access help – rather than being arrested – through shelters. The number of women's shelters in Afghanistan has increased from 14 in 2011 to 18 in 2013. However, the capacity of the shelters is far too limited for the number of women who require assistance, and fewer than half of the country's 34 provinces have even a single shelter. There are no shelters in the more conservative southern half of the country.
These shelters may not be sustainable as they are entirely funded by international donors, and donor assistance is dropping rapidly as the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of international combat forces from Afghanistan approaches. The Afghan government has shown no interest in funding shelters through the government budget and has at times taken actions detrimental to the shelters, including a 2011 effort to take over the shelters and 2012 statements by the justice minister accusing shelters of “moral corruption.”

“Afghanistan's donors have a crucial role to play in supporting shelters that are literally life-saving for many women,” Adams said. “They should not only help ensure the survival of the shelters that exist, but support expansion of the shelter system including in southern Afghanistan.”
Human Rights Watch called on the Afghan government and its international partners to take the following urgent steps:

President Hamid Karzai should issue an administrative decree that “running away” should not be treated as a crime under Afghan law and that charges of attempted zina should not be brought. He should exonerate or pardon everyone convicted for “running away;”
The Ministry of Interior should instruct all police of their obligation to convey immediately information pertaining to all incidents of violence against women or possible crimes under the EVAW Law to the prosecutor;
The Attorney General should issue instructions requiring prosecutors to formally investigate all allegations of crimes against women under the EVAW Law and other laws, bring charges as the evidence warrants, and fully investigate whether women accused of crimes were acting in response to abuse; and
International donors should make implementation of the EVAW Law, abolition of the crime of “running away,” revisions to the zina and family laws, and reforms to other laws that discriminate against women key issues in political engagement with the Afghan government.
“Moral Crimes” and Women's Rights in Afghanistan: Recent Developments

The number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan has increased by 50 percent in the period from October 2011 to May 2013. This troubling increase has occurred during a period in which there have been some new efforts by the Afghan government to protect women. In spite of these efforts, however, there has been a failure to take successful action to end wrongful imprisonment of women.

The Afghan government and its international partners have made some progress in addressing wrongful imprisonment of women and girls for “moral crimes” since 2012. Key officials have spoken out, at least on the illegality of “running away” prosecutions. Specialized units within the Attorney General's Office have made some progress in increasing enforcement of the Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law). There has been a small increase in the number of shelters for women fleeing violence, and there seems to be a growing awareness by police that many cases should be referred to family court for resolution through marriage or divorce rather than being sent to prosecutors. Some women's rights activists report that the government, from President Hamid Karzai to the level of individual police and prosecutors, has shown increased openness to hearing concerns about violence against women and working with activists, including in individual cases.

Less encouraging, however, is the continued abusive use of coerced gynecological examinations, and a lack of progress in the recruitment of female police officers. Family court, where women can seek a divorce and custody of their children, exists only in Kabul. Even the slightly expanded number of shelters is nowhere near adequate to meet the need and women in the majority of provinces and the entire southern half of the country have no access to shelters. As long as the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” continues to increase – as it has done by 50 percent in the last year and a half – it is clear that the Afghan government needs to do much more to end abusive prosecutions of women and girls.
Below is a timeline of major “moral crimes”– related developments since March 2012:

April 11, 2012: The Attorney Generals' Office issued a directive stating that “running away” is not a crime under Afghan law and should not be prosecuted:
A circulation must be prepared and shared with all relevant prosecution offices in the center and provinces and the prosecutors should be instructed not to prepare unjustifiable case files regarding running away cases that have not been criminalized under Afghanistan laws and cannot be heard by courts and refrain from conducting baseless investigations. Other circumstances where people run away to commit any other crime are not covered by this instruction. The issue is being communicated to you so that you can take action in accordance with instruction of the High Council of Attorney General Office of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

September 16, 2012: Justice Minister Habibullah Ghalib, Women's Affairs Minister Husn Banu Ghazanfar, and Deputy Interior Minister Mirza Mohammad Yarmand each strongly condemned wrongful imprisonment of women and girls on charges of “running away.” Ghalib said that police and prosecutors should never send cases of “running away” to the courts. Yarmand pledged his commitment to ending abuses by the police, saying that all police had been instructed that running away is not a crime. Ghazanfar said that women and girls accused of running away are not criminals, but generally crime victims who flee to escape violence committed against them.
September 16, 2012: Fawzia Koofi, director of the lower house parliamentary committee on women's affairs, and her counterpart, Siddiqa Balkhi, the director of the upper house parliamentary committee on women's affairs, called for the government to immediately free women and girls charged with running away under Afghanistan's ambiguous and arbitrary “moral crimes” law.
October 2012: Criminal charges of “disrespect of police” are brought against Batool Muradi, after she becomes the first Afghan woman to challenge accusations by her husband of “infidelity” through DNA testing of their children.
Late 2012: The Attorney General announced plans to establish specialized units responsible for bringing prosecutions under the EVAW Law in all of the country's 34 provinces from the current 8. While the number of cases brought under the EVAW law remains very low even in provinces with these specialized units, activists consider the specialized units, funded by international donors, to be a step in the right direction.
February 2013: Gulnaz, a young woman released by presidential pardon in December 2011 after serving two and a half years of a 12-year sentence for zina after she was raped, married her rapist. Her case, which received wide coverage in the international and Afghan media, highlighted not only the frequency with which rape victims are imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan, but also the lack of options for such women following release. Gulnaz spent over a year in a women's shelter before social and family pressures led her to marry the man who raped her as the best available option for her and the daughter she gave birth to in prison as a result of the rape.
May 2013: A parliamentary proposal to amend the EVAW Law risks limiting further the ability of women to flee violence or seek prosecution of their abusers.
Insufficient recruitment of female police officers

Female police officers have a crucial role to play in enforcing Afghanistan's EVAW Law. In Afghanistan's deeply gender segregated society, many women have difficulty even leaving their homes, and would find it impossible to report a crime, especially one involving sensitive issues of sexual assault or domestic violence, to a male police officer. In the absence of female officers, reporting crimes may even be unsafe: one woman told Human Rights Watch that when she went to a police station to report being raped, she was raped again by an officer in the station.

The percentage of women in the Afghan police has remained at about 1 percent over the last few years. A Human Rights Watch statement highlighted some of the challenges that make it difficult to recruit and retain women in the police force, including abuse and sometimes assault by male colleague in the police and a lack of the most basic toilet and changing room facilities. In spite of multiple reports of incidents of sexual harassment and rape of female police officers by male police officers, there have been no cases of successful prosecution of male police officers for these abuses and the Ministry of Interior has denied that abuses against women officers are a problem.

Continued abusive use of vaginal examinations

Afghan women accused of “moral crimes” are routinely ordered to undergo gynecological examinations that purport to provide information about whether the woman or girl is a “virgin” and whether she has engaged in recent sexual intercourse. This practice continues despite the fact that gynecological examinations that purport to determine virginity have no medical validity, and constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international human rights law. A modified gynecological examination that is rid of so-called virginity tests can be legitimately used for therapeutic purposes and evidence collection in rape cases, but should not be used otherwise, and should never be used without the informed consent of the woman or girl.

A senior police official told Human Rights Watch in May 2013 that these examinations can be ordered by any local police officer –“whoever sees the case first.” Another senior government official said that women are often without any justification subjected to multiple examinations. Human Rights Watch found that senior Afghan government officials seem unprepared to accept that there is no scientific validity to these examinations.

Desperate need for more shelters

In 2001, Afghanistan had no shelters for women and girls fleeing violence. The 18 shelters that exist today have demonstrated that they provide an option for women that not only can keep them from being wrongfully imprisoned, but can also literally save their lives in the many cases where “honor killing” is threatened. The success of existing shelters should lead to creation of new shelters sufficient to ensure that women in every province have access to a shelter. Unfortunately, the total dependency of these shelters on international donors, combined with the often unsupportive attitude of the Afghan government toward shelters, creates real uncertainty about the long–term sustainability of shelters. The overall decline in donor support to Afghanistan reduces the likelihood that there will be any major expansion of urgently needed shelter services.

Afghanistan: Talks Shouldn't Ignore Taliban Abuse of Women

Human Rights Watch — 2010-07-13T04:00:44Z

(Kabul) - Ongoing Taliban attacks on women in Afghanistan show why women's rights should be a priority in any political agreement with insurgent forces, Human Rights Watchsaid in a report released today. The Afghan government and its international supporters have ignored the need to protect women in programs to reintegrate insurgent fighters and have not guaranteed that women's rights will be included in potential talks with the Taliban, Human Rights Watch said.

The 65-page report,"The ‘Ten-Dollar Talib' and Women's Rights: Afghan Women and the Risks of Reintegration and Reconciliation," addresses the potential challenges to women's rights posed by future government agreements with insurgent forces. The report describes how in areas under Taliban control, women are often subjected to threats, intimidation and violence, girls' education is targeted, and women political leaders and activists are attacked and killed with impunity.

"Afghan women shouldn't have to give up their rights so the government can cut a deal with the Taliban," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. "It would be a tragic betrayal to snatch away the progress made by and for women and girls over the past nine years."

In areas they control or influence, the Taliban have threatened and attacked women in public life and ordinary women who work outside their homes. A common form of threat is the "night letter," a note often left at a house or school.
A female government employee quit her job after receiving this letter in February 2010: "We Taliban warn you to stop working for the government otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This will be a good lesson for those women like you who are working."

Hossai, a 22-year-old working for an American development company, received similar threats by phone but continued to work. In April, unidentified gunmen shot her dead as she left her office. Soon after, another woman received a night letter telling her that she would be next: "In the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list, your name and other women's names are also on our list."
Taliban and other insurgents regularly target girls' education, including threatening and attacking female teachers and students. In February, a girls' school in a northern province received the following night letter:

"You were already informed by us to close the school and not mislead the pure and innocent girls under this non-Muslim government; however you did not pay attention.... This is the last warning to close the school immediately... If you remain in the province, remember that you and your family will be eliminated."

There is little sign so far that the government of President Hamid Karzai is adequately addressing concerns about these attacks in its programs to reintegrate insurgents or in proposals to shift from fighting the Taliban to reconciling with senior Taliban leaders, Human Rights Watch said.

The Afghan government has offered only weak assurances for women that it intends to safeguard the freedoms they have regained since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. In recent years, Karzai has sold women short when it was politically expedient. In March 2009, for example, he signed the discriminatory Shia Personal Status Law (which denies Shia women the rights to child custody and freedom of movement, among other rights), and in 2008 he pardoned two convicted gang rapists for political reasons.

Some international advocates of reintegration are recasting the insurgency as primarily non-ideological, highlighting "ten-dollar Talibs," who fight only for money. United States and NATO forces and several major donors are strongly backing reintegration programs, which they will largely finance. Their support for reconciliation with the Taliban is more limited.

Despite promises from Afghanistan's international supporters to promote women's rights, Human Rights Watch remains concerned that they, too, may sacrifice women's rights as part of an exit strategy from Afghanistan. For instance, although the Afghan government has said that insurgents who reintegrate or reconcile with the government will have to agree to the Afghan constitution, which upholds equal rights for women, there is no vetting or mechanism to ensure compliance.

Human Rights Watch interviews suggest that there is division among Afghan and international actors about whether it will be possible to offer explicit safeguards for women's rights to education, work, and political engagement.

"Donor governments rightfully stress Afghan leadership of these processes," Malinowski said. "But that doesn't mean they have to bankroll Afghan deals that will endanger women."

The Afghan government has sought to co-opt opposition factions by offering them impunity for war crimes and other serious violations of international law. But justice and accountability for serious crimes should be at the core of any reconciliation process with the Taliban and other insurgents, Human Rights Watch said. That requires bringing current government officials to justice for serious crimes, as well as stronger vetting of candidates for elected office and political appointments.

The report outlines conditions that should be included in any reintegration and negotiation or reconciliation process to ensure women's rights. The rights of women to work, obtain an education, and engage in political life should be explicitly safeguarded, Human Rights Watch said. Individuals with a history of serious abuses against women and girls should be excluded from power. And women leaders need to be fully involved in the decision-making processes for both reintegration and reconciliation, since they are themselves the best guarantors of their rights.

"Afghan women are paying a heavy price in this conflict, and no one wants peace more than they do," Malinowski said. "But their rights don't have to be traded away in hasty deals. There can be peace with justice."

Human Rights Watch says new US Policy in Afghanistan should stress human rights

Human Rights Watch — 2009-03-27T15:47:41Z

The Obama administration deserves credit for showing its commitment to Afghanistan with its public statements, appointment of a special representative, and policy reviews. We hope that this will produce a fundamental rethinking of US military, political, and humanitarian policies in Afghanistan.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

(New York) - The United States should make protecting human rights a priority in its revised policy toward Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to President Barack Obama.

"The Obama administration deserves credit for showing its commitment to Afghanistan with its public statements, appointment of a special representative, and policy reviews," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "We hope that this will produce a fundamental rethinking of US military, political, and humanitarian policies in Afghanistan."

The Human Rights Watch letter to Obama outlines a number of steps needed to improve the climate for human rights in Afghanistan. They include improving everyday security for civilians, combating warlordism, pursuing justice for past crimes, strengthening women's rights, protecting freedom of expression, sidelining rights abusers in upcoming elections, and reforming the judiciary.

Human Rights Watch urged the US to promote needed reform of Afghanistan's security agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), and to reconsider its support for tribal militia. Human Rights Watch also stressed the need for the United States to alter its military policies to minimize civilian casualties, review the practice of "night raids" on homes, and bring its detention policy at the Bagram prison into conformity with international law to protect detainees' rights.

Human Rights Watch said that the Bush administration expressed many bold aspirations, but that the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda was placed high above other key goals, including human rights, the rule of law, and good governance. To fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, many warlords were placed in positions of authority, relied on for military support, and provided weapons and funds by the US. The US is still maintaining some of these relationships, and has shown little appetite for sidelining senior warlords when the opportunity has arisen.

"The growth of the insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be understood outside the prism of lawlessness, rights abuses, and corruption under which so many Afghans live," said Adams. "The United States has been complicit in the resurgence of warlordism in Afghanistan. It is time for the US to lead by example and break all links to past and present criminals, and press the Afghan government to do the same."

The plight of women under the Taliban was cited as a major reason for overthrowing the Taliban government in 2001. However, far too little real progress has been made in delivering women their basic rights.
"Though some improvements have been made, Afghan women and girls still face huge gaps in health and education and face routine violence and discrimination," said Adams. "The United States should reinvigorate discussions with the Afghan government and civil society and make the promotion of women's rights a key plank of its new policy."

Human Rights Watch also called for a shift of emphasis in US military strategy. While the US is deploying more troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, greater attention is needed to provide basic security for Afghans in both conflict and non-conflict areas.

Human Rights Watch is concerned by US support for the latest experiment in using tribal militia, the Afghan Public Protection Force. The failures of previous national and international attempts to gain the support of Afghanistan's tribes are well documented. Most efforts have been exploited by local politicians and other actors, exacerbating tribal discord and increasing the black market in weapons. The current pilot project already appears to be repeating past mistakes.

"We do not underestimate the challenges faced in Afghanistan, but better policies can make a significant difference in the lives of Afghans," said Adams. "It is essential for the US, as the most important external power in Afghanistan, to get its new policy right."