After Over a Decade of Occupation and $1.5 Billion in US Aid, the Reality Facing Women in Afghanistan Has Barely Changed
The fate of women in Afghanistan has been the moral lynch pin for the enduring occupation by U.S. and NATO forces from the presidencies of George W. Bush through Barack Obama. But according to experts and women across the war-torn country, little has changed for women there despite upwards of $1.5 billion spent to empower women and girls.
Instead, a deeply misogynist culture and ruling class endure, despite ongoing pledges from political leaders to western audiences promising progress. Instead, whenever violence worsens, the government’s tepid efforts to pressure social conservatives to respect rights and expand opportunities for women are set aside as military alliances and political responses take precedent.
This is not to say that more than a decade of work by social reformers inside and outside the country have come to naught, but it shows how deeply entrenched cultural and political resistance remains. The West has helped Afghanistan to expand and improve maternal health care, as well as open up schools that girls can attend in urban and rural areas. But as Nimmi Gowrinathan, a visiting professor at City College in New York said of educating girls, “That’s the reality until the sixth grade when they get married.”…
But, in hearings behind closed doors, Afghanistan’s Appeals Court released the policemen on bail and quashed the death sentences. Women’s rights activists in Afghanistan, along with Farkhunda’s family, strongly condemned the legal turnaround. “After Farkhunda, I feel unsafe here,” prominent activist Samira Hamidi told me by telephone from Kabul. “The systems failed her. Any man can do whatever he likes towards any woman. They can kill her, wrongly accuse her of crimes, they can set her on fire. In terms of the police, in terms of justice, what we see with Farkhunda is one big failure.”
Female activists and women in public life routinely face threats and violence, including murder. Eighty-seven percent of Afghan women report enduring abuse in their lifetime. Domestic violence, child marriage, forced marriage, suicide, self-immolation, sexual violence arrrrnd so-called “honor killings” are a daily reality.
The 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (the EVAW Law) promised important reforms, but government enforcement has been weak. Meanwhile, women who flee abuse, including rape victims, continue to be wrongly imprisoned for so-called “moral crimes” and subjected to abusive and medically meaningless “virginity examinations.”
Ghani, in office since September 2014, has spoken supportively of women’s rights. But his government has yet to take meaningful steps to end the impunity for violence against women that was pervasive under the previous government.
Read More: What President Ashraf Ghani Should Do to Reassure Afghan Women