Afghan legislation nudges women’s rights forward

KABUL — The young Afghan woman got her first inkling of a life beyond her abusive husband when friends mentioned a government ministry dedicated to defending women. Then she saw a TV show about women’s rights. Finally, after four years of marriage, she grabbed some car fare and fled.

Arazo, 19, says she knew from the beginning that the beatings weren’t right but it took years for her to realize she could leave. She decided she had to rescue herself, even though it meant leaving her 2-year-old son behind because Afghan law gives custody to the father.

Now, Afghanistan is poised to enact legislation that would allow her to prosecute her husband for abuse. Courts hold little sway in Afghanistan, but activists call the law a necessary step in the slow struggle for real rights for women here.

The Elimination of Violence Against Women Act comes on the heels of a marriage law for the minority Shiite Muslim community that sparked an international uproar in March because of wording that appeared to legalize marital rape.

The government changed the Shiite law to remove the most controversial phrases, but the revised version now in effect still allows a husband to withhold financial support from his wife if she refuses to have sex with him and limits women’s ability to leave the home.

The debate over the Shiite law soured Afghanistan’s reputation abroad just as the country headed into an August presidential election, and it appears to have propelled the latest legislation to the president’s desk.

Sunni Muslims make up about 80 percent of the population, with Shiites comprising at least 15 percent.

Arazo, a Sunni, says she will not press charges against her husband because local police would be unlikely to hold him long even if they arrested him. Speaking at a private aid office in Kabul, she gave only her first name and refused to say where she is from for fear that her husband might track her down.

But she said the legislation could give more women courage to stand up for themselves if it spreads the idea of women’s rights into the countryside.

“I learned as a child that a husband is like a second God, that I should obey whatever he says,” she explained. An orphan at 11, she was forced to marry a cousin by an uncle even though they did not like each other. The marriage was unhappy from the beginning, and then her husband started hitting her. Sometimes he would slam her head against the wall, she said.

Now that she has left, she can never return home, because she is sure he or his relatives would either force her back into his house or kill her.

The new legislation to protect women comes nearly eight years after the fall of the Taliban regime, which made women virtual prisoners in their homes. The measure, which was first proposed in 2004 and signed this summer by President Hamid Karzai while Parliament was in recess, outlaws spousal abuse along with acts like the bartering of female relatives and child marriages.

“There was lots of resistance,” said Shinkai Karokhail, a female lawmaker from Kabul who was involved in the early drafting. Conservative religious leaders didn’t want anyone jailed for domestic violence, saying they should instead be asked to leave home temporarily.

Parliament is expected to approve the legislation but the bill has already been watered down. University professors, lawyers, police officials and even some members of the human rights commission — in a nod to social limitations — asked for changes that made punishments less severe, Karokhail said.

“They squeezed the bill, they reduced the articles, they eliminated so many parts,” she said. In particular, she said it does not draw a clear enough line between rape and adultery. Many Afghan rape victims end up jailed for having sex outside of marriage.

Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, welcomed the legislation even though she said changing traditional practices and reducing abuse will likely take years.

“Now, we will have a tool to change that reality in the courts,” Samar said of the act. “It will make a difference in the lives of Afghan women — at least those who can reach the courts.”

Afghanistan was a patriarchal society long before the Taliban forced women to stay inside the home and banned girls from attending school. While the removal of these strictures has given women more opportunities on paper, those choices often aren’t available in villages and towns where it is common for a man to settle a debt by giving a sister in marriage and where female rape victims risk their lives by speaking out.

“I never saw a man being stoned because of rape. But the women are stoned,” said Sabrina Saqib, a lawmaker from Kabul who is one of the main backers of the act.

Though some reformers in the capital demonstrated against the Shiite marriage law, many more women showed up to condemn the protest. They said the law reflected the way they live their lives, in obedience to a husband.

Arazo pays dearly for her decision to run away from home. She has no way to get her son back and now lives at a women’s shelter with no way of supporting herself. She is going to school, but still can barely read.

Saqib acknowledged that women face many barriers to reporting crimes, even with a law to back them up, but stressed that it is a move toward changing mindsets.

“Men in our society, lots of them don’t see women as equal to men,” she said. “So we have to change the way they look at that.”