Afghan women’s rights trampled despite new law

Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the Herat’s burns hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, Rawa News reported Monday.

As the world marked International Women’s Day, ambivalence, impunity, weak law enforcement and corruption continued to undermine women’s rights in Afghanistan, despite a July 2009 law banning violence against women, rights activists said.

A recent case of the public beating of a woman for alleged elopement, also shown on private TV stations in Kabul, highlights the issue.

In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.

“One woman was beaten in public for the elopement and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat,” Munib told the Afghan media.

According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom.

“When the roads reopen to Dolaina [closed by snow] we will send a team to investigate,” said the governor, adding that he was concerned that arresting Ahad could cause instability. “We have asked the authorities in Kabul for support and guidance.”

Self-immolation

“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws,” Zarmina, 28, told media. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat’s burns hospital.

Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.

“People call it the `hospital of cries’ as patients here cry out loudly in pain,” Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told the media.

Beneath the cries lie cases of domestic violence and/or disappointment with the justice system.

“Self-immolation proves that the justice system for female victims is failing,” said Movidul-Haq Mowidi, a human rights activist in Herat.

Barriers to justice

Despite laws prohibiting gender violence and upholding women’s rights, widespread gender discrimination, fear of abuse, corruption and other challenges are undermining the judicial system, experts said.

“Women are denied their most fundamental human rights and risk further violence in the course of seeking justice for crimes perpetrated against them,” stated a report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on the situation of Afghan women in July 2009.

Orzala Ashraf, a women’s rights activist in Kabul, blames the government: “Laws are clear about crimes but we see big criminals thriving and being nurtured by the state for illicit political gains,” she told the media, pointing to the government’s alleged failure to address human rights violations committed over the past three decades of conflict.

“Because no one is put on trial for his crimes, a criminal culture is being promoted: violators have no fear of the law, prosecution and a meaningful penalty,” said Ashraf.

Deep-seated ambivalence to women’s rights is evident from a law signed off by President Hamid Karzai in early 2009: The Shia Personal Status Law, dubbed a ‘rape legalizing law’, was amended after strong domestic and international pressure.

“The first version [of the law] was totally intolerable,” said Najia Zewari, a women’s rights expert with the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM). “Despite positive changes in the final version, there are articles that still need to be discussed and reviewed further,” she said.

Another example of this ambivalence is the case of the men who threw acid in the faces of 15 female students in Kandahar city in November 2008: Karzai publicly vowed they would be “severely punished” but court officials in Kandahar and Kabul have said they are unaware of the case and do not know where the alleged perpetrators are.

Judges say the men were wrongly accused and forced to confess,” Ranna Tarina, head of Kandahar women’s affairs department, told the media.

Violence database

Over the past two years more than 1,900 cases of violence against women in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, from verbal abuse to physical violence, have been recorded in a database run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM.

One recorded case is the murder, by her in-laws in Parwan Province north of Kabul, of a young woman who had refused to live with her abusive husband. Another is the regular physical and mental torture meted out to a woman by her husband and mother in-law in Kabul.

“The database does not give a perfect picture but it helps to highlight some of the common miseries of Afghan women,” UNIFEM’s Najia Zewari told the media. UNIFEM is keen to make the database publicly available on the internet.

“Violence against women is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan but it is good to see crimes do not remain confined to a home and a village,” said activist Orzala Ashraf.

Chilean president's name floated for U.N.

Posted By Colum Lynch

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has been engaged in highly discreet talks with the United Nations about coming to work for the organization after she steps down next month as her country's first female leader, according to senior U.N. sources.

Bachelet's name has been floated in recent weeks as a possible special representative to Haiti and as a candidate for a soon-to-be-created high-level post as Ban Ki-moon's point person on issues relating to women, according to senior U.N. officials and diplomats."There are people who think she would be great for a number of U.N. jobs," said a senior U.N. diplomat familiar with the matter.

Bachelet has signaled that she is not interested in the women's post, and sources say it is unlikely that she will go to Haiti. But they say she is interested in pursuing a senior position in the United Nations, preferably as the head of a U.N. agency or another high-flying U.N. job.

U.N. sources said any talk about Bachelet's future will have to be put off for the immediate future while she leads the Chilean response to Saturday's massive, 8.8-magnitude earthquake.

But she is unlikely to play any political role in the incoming government of the conservative leader, Sebastian Pinera, whose election ends 20 years of center-left rule in Chile.

The Socialist political leader, who briefly went to high school in Bethesda, Maryland, in the early 1960s, has been considered among the world's most powerful and influential women since her election as president in 2006. Last year, Forbes magazine placed her 22nd on its list of the most powerful 100 women in the world.

Bachelet's father, Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet, was a senior military advisor to President Salvador Allende, the Socialist Chilean leader who was killed during a U.S. backed military coup. He was imprisoned and tortured by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military government and died in prison. Michelle Bachelet was also detained along with her mother in 1975 andtortured.

A trained doctor and student of military strategy, Bachelet has headed Chile's health and defense ministries.

DAWN: "UNDP's hiring process is flawed and with no integrity"

Women activists criticize U.N. appointment

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, April 8 (Reuters) - An international women's network voiced dismay on Tuesday at the naming of a Spaniard to head the main U.N. women's organization, saying the U.N. had bypassed the most well-qualified candidate in response to funding concerns and pressure from Spain.

The United Nations said the selection process for the new executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) had been "comprehensive and extensive". A spokeswoman said there was "no direct connection" with funding issues.

The criticism came from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), a group that had backed the candidacy of one of its founders.

The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) announced on Monday that Ines Alberdi, a sociologist and former member of the Madrid regional assembly representing the ruling Socialist Party, had been given the job.

She succeeds Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore, appointed last year to head the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

Earlier last year, Spain signed an agreement with Heyzer to give 3 million euros, at the time worth $3.9 million, to a UNIFEM-managed trust fund to combat violence against women.

In a statement, DAWN, a network of researchers on gender issues based in Africa, Asia and the Americas, expressed dismay at the choice.

"We feel the selection process has been deeply flawed and its integrity violated," it said.

DAWN said it understood that the interview panel looking at six shortlisted candidates had identified Indian academic Gita Sen, a founder of DAWN, as the best.

"However, because of the U.N.'s concerns over funding and significant and open political pressure from the government of Spain, other names from the shortlist were brought back into consideration," it said.

"This is a tragedy for the U.N. in terms of its ability to to draw competent candidates, transparency and fairness, and its credibility with women's movements and development organizations."

In its announcement, UNDP said, "The selection process was comprehensive and extensive." It said Alberdi, who has also worked as an expert in the European Union's equal opportunities unit, brought 25 years of relevant experience to the job.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas, asked whether the appointment had been linked to funding, said, "There is no direct connection."

"I can tell you that there is a constant concern to have geographical distribution within the system," Montas told a regular news briefing.

Last month, 10 U.S.-based non-governmental organizations wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressing concern that the UNIFEM post had been vacant so long and urging him to appoint the "one strongly qualified candidate" -- an apparent reference to Sen.

Officials at Spain's U.N. mission could not immediately be reached for comment.