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Women Rights Unit
Goal:
To promote, ensure women's rights and
monitoring the situation of Women in
Afghanistan and also make an efforts to
eliminate/reduce the discriminatory
attitudes to words women in Afghan society.
Objectives:
-
Bring changes in the situation of women
by promoting the human rights values in
Afghan society.
-
Raising awareness by convening workshops
, seminars, mass media and other
communication resources.
-
Develop a national strategy plan for the
betterments of womens rights in the
country based on International human
rights principals and standards.
Area of Activities:
As it is one of the initiatives of the
commission to ensure and promote womens
rights in the country. Womens rights unit
has made effort in the following area :
-
Clean reflection of CEDAW and equal rights
for all citizens including Men and Women in
the new constitution.
-
Active involvement of women in the
reconstruction process of the country.
-
Sufficient representation of Afghan women in
the C.L.J. and ensure equal rights for men
and women in the new constitution.
For the fulfillment of this object many
workshops have been conducted with different
category of people (lawyers, judges,
university and school lecturers and ordinary
people) and special recommendation in the
form of a (draft constitution) has made to
the constitution commission.
Conducting consultative meeting for making
an assessments of womens situation with in
the governmental organizations to collect
information and recommendation regarding the
problems that women were facing in their
organizations and also many surveys were
conducted by womens rights unit regarding
the number of female employees and how many
key position have seized by women in the
governmental setup.
Special recommendation by the commission to
the judicial reform commission on some
aspects of civil and criminal laws that were
clearly violating womens rights the target
articles either amended or new materials
should be added.
Regular monthly visits of womens prison and
monitoring womens situation and trail
procedure of women cases.
Figure out the number of Afghan female
prisoners inside Afghanistan and in the
neighboring countries by the help of
Ministry of foreign affairs as well as in to
different parts of Afghanistan.
After the constitutional Loya Jirga (CLJ)
the civil society and Afghan Independent
Human Rights Commission conducted a follow
up workshop for the delegates of
constitution Loya Jirga on Jan 16.
Celebration of International womens day as
a focal point to promote womens rights in
Afghanistan specially political rights, such
as womens involvements in the registration
process for the next presidential election
is very low.
-
The celebration
event of womens day not only held in
Kabul,
but also in other sixteen provinces
conducted by regional offices of AIHRC in
conjunction with local NGOs focus on womens
participation in the reconstruction as well
as political process in Afghanistan.
-
The women
rights unit launched a photo exhibit at
Kabul University on Afghan women to coincide
with International a womens day. The
exhibit which included 120 photographs and
more than 20 posters were featuring the
Afghan womens active role in society such
as the negative and positive aspects of
customs and tradition practicing regarding
women in the country.
-
The exhibition was organized in conjunction
with AINA, an Afghan led organization, who
provided eleven photographers.
-
A documentary which reflects womens rights
of education and work was prepared by Afghan
television documentary unit on
recommendation of AIHRC Women Rights
Section.
-
An art film which reflect the bad effects of
practicing customary law under the name of
Sharia law, A women who raped by commander
of war was accused to the execution of
adultery, she was always considering of
being stoning under the decision of local
councils, by the name of Sharia law and
finally she expired with this fear.
-
In response to
reports of high numbers of cases of women
setting themselves on fire in suicide
attempts, the AIHRC Herat office convened a
seminar on self-immolation in October 2003.
The seminar, which included scholars,
doctors, lawyers, and womens rights
advocates, sought to share research on
self-immolation and to explore solutions to
prevent women from committing suicide. At
the seminar, twenty-two presentations were
made and discussed.
Forced marriages, under marriages, and
multiple marriages were identified as major
causes of self-immolations, along with the
harmful consequences of the past decades of
war and oppression of women during the past
25 years. Continuing restrictions on womens
lives as a result of the lack of security in
the country were also identified as
contributing factors.
The AIHRC compiled and published the seminar
presentations as a book, why
self-immolation? At its conclusion, the
seminars adopted a resolution requesting
actions from cultural, social, and
governmental institutions. The main
recommendations for the resolution are
presented in the box below.
Research Projects
Brief information about the research has
been conducted.
As it is one of the initiatives of the
commission to ensure and promote womens
rights and to eliminate discriminatory
attitudes towards women in the country.
Womens rights unit has made some research
in the following area:
-
A book named
Analysis of the
causes of womens crimes
(this book is
included the statistics of different forms
of crimes that women are committing due to
many reasons) in different parts of
Afghanistan.
-
As the number of criminal women are
increasing in the country as compare to past
few years, therefore the causes why women
are committing crimes are also identified in
this book. It is also identifying the
harmful consequences of womens crime in the
family and society.
-
In response to reports of high numbers of
cases of women setting themselves on fire in
suicide attempts, the AIHRC Herat office
convened a seminar on self-immolation in
October 2003. The seminar, which included
scholars, doctors, lawyers, and womens
rights advocates, sought to share research
on self-immolation and to explore solutions
to prevent women from committing suicide. At
the seminar, twenty-two presentations were
made and discussed.
Forced marriages, under age marriages, and
multiple marriages were identified as major
causes of self-immolations, along with the
harmful consequences of the past decades of
war and oppression of women during the past
25 years. Continuing restrictions on womens
lives as a result of the lack of security in
the country were also identified as
contributing factors.
The AIHRC
compiled and published the seminar
presentations along
the research as a book named
why
self-immolation?
-
The Womens
Rights Unit launched a photo exhibit at
Kabul University on Afghan women to coincide
with International Womens Day. The exhibit,
which included 120 photographs, illustrated
both the positive and negative aspects of
the current situation of Afghan women. The
photographs were also identifying womens
role in different region and with in
different ethnic group. The exhibition was
organized in conjunction with AINA,
an Afghan led organization, who provided
eleven photographers. A selection of the
photograph also were exhibited at eh Palais
des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland as part
of the Commission on Human Rights.
Future Plan for Research
Forced Marriages
-
It is estimated
that between 60-80% of all marriages in
Afghanistan are forced marriages. The term
forced marriages covers a wide array of
practices (see types of forced marriages
below), from giving a female in marriage as
repayment for a debt or to clear up a feud
to a family determining who a daughter
should marry without her consent.
-
While forced marriage practices may vary
between region and ethnic groups and is more
commonly practiced in the rural areas, it is
a common feature throughout all social,
ethnic, religious, tribal and economic
divisions of Afghan society. What these
practices have in common is that they
contain the word forced, which indicates it
is an unlawful practice and a violation of
womens human rights.
Domestic Violence
-
As women
targeted by violence specially domestic
violence long long ago in
Afghanistan as
part of wrong customs and tradition
practicing, but more than two decades war
and disturbance increased the level of
violence against women in the country at
family and community levels. |
