Working Against Women - The Afghan Government's Attack on Women's Shelters
The first women's shelters in Afghanistan only opened in the last decade, but have proven to be critical refuges to women fleeing violence. Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of violence against women in the world. The start of a network of shelters was the first crack of light into an otherwise dark void. The availability of shelters (14 in total now) is the very early beginnings of tackling a problem so pervasive as to often seem insurmountable.
In 2008, I worked on the first ever quantitative research into the levels of domestic abuse in Afghanistan. Our findings were nothing short of horrifying: in many places, a majority of women were facing regular abuse at home, whether sexual violence, physical violence, or psychological violence. Most marriages were "forced marriages" (distinct from arranged marriages), and abuse was often perpetrated by more than one family member, including female family members (30% of instances of abuse), such as a mother-in-law or sister-in-law. You can access the report, published by Global Rights, "Living With Violence: A National Report on Domestic Violence in Afghanistan" here.
Today, these shelters, which can sometimes mean the difference between life and death for women fleeing abuse, face their biggest battle yet. And it's not from violent and deranged wife beaters, insane clerics like Ayatollah Mohseni, or even the Taliban. No, it comes from the Afghan Government, the same government that is supposed to operate under a constitution that provides for the equality of men and women.
As described by an analyst in Kabul, Una Moore, the Afghan Government plans to take over control of the shelters from independent women's organizations, who founded and operate the shelters, and impose a set of rules and regulations that in some cases, could cost women their lives:
Now, the shelter commission’s verdict is in. The government will seize all women’s shelters countrywide and place them under the control of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the police. Women and girls seeking protection will have to plead their cases before an admissions panel of government employees and undergo medically dubious “examinations” to prove they are not guilty of adultery or prostitution. If a woman passes both tests and is admitted, she will not be allowed to leave without official permission. In effect, Afghanistan’s few refuges for abused women are about to become prisons.
Under the new shelter regulations, if a woman’s family comes to claim her, she must be handed over. If enforced, this rule will cost lives. Nearly all women living in Afghanistan’s shelters are survivors of violence inflicted by members of their own families. Some have been disfigured and permanently disabled by abusive fathers and husbands and have fled with their children. Others, including young girls, have been sold or given away to settle disputes and erase family debts. Forcibly returning these women to the homes they fled from will amount to a death sentence for some.
Manizha Naderi of Women for Afghan Women, an organization operating a much-praised shelter for abused women in Kabul, points out that funding to their shelter was provided by donors who understood that they were funding an independent women's organization with a strong reputation to manage the shelter responsibly. It would hardly be legal for a government body to seize control of the funds and resources committed to what were supposed to be independent shelters. Naderi further points out,
We have always allowed [the Ministry of Women's Affairs (MoWA)] to visit and inspect our centers and shelters periodically, but we will not allow them to take over. MoWA does not have the capacity to run women’s shelters. Furthermore, as an arm of the government itself, dependent on that body for its survival, MoWA lacks the independence and the will to stand up for women’s rights against an increasingly conservative regime.
It's alarming that in Afghanistan, where millions live below the poverty line in a country in 
desperate need of a litany of governance and legal reforms, the government should see it as a priority to seek control over independent women's shelters. It demonstrates just how out of touch the Karzai Government is with the needs of the people, and their overt disregard for women's rights. The fact that the Minister of Women's Affairs, Dr. Husn Banu Ghazanfar, leads the way in the attack on women's shelters is sad evidence of the long-running accusations that Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs is ineffective and irrelevant to the movement for women's rights, firmly under the thumb of Karzai's executive. As Afghan human rights defender Horia Mosadiq blogged yesterday for Amnesty International,
Now, instead of supporting the efforts of these brave Afghan women, the MoWA legislation tries to take control of the running of the shelters, and oversee who is eligible for protection via an eight-person admission panel stacked with representatives from government ministries.
The legislation also introduces a requirement of a ‘forensic medical examination’ if requested by the admission panel, a term referring to the examination that women are subjected to when accused of adultery – a criminal offense in Afghanistan.
This test examines women for evidence of sexual activity – not to protect them in case of sexual abuse, or gather evidence against their abusers, but rather to see if they are somehow morally at fault, and therefore, subject to prosecution!
In light of the abuse regularly meted out by the Taliban, including the mutilation of women's faces as punishments and the August 2010 stoning to death of a couple in Kunduz, as well as the appallingly high levels of domstic abuse occurring across Afghanistan, one would think the Afghan Government would be seeking out ways to better protect women, rather than to remove one of the few recourses they have to safety. Seizing the women's shelters will, with certainty, make the situation of abused women worse. Says Naderi, “That’s the sole reason for the attempted takeover,” adding, “otherwise, if they want shelters, why haven’t they opened some of their own?”
For further background, other articles on this issue can be found at:
Karzai Threatens To Close Afghan Women’s Shelters, Ms. Magazine, February 11, 2011
http://msmagazine.com/blog/
Reforms of Afghan women's shelters criticised, The Irish Times, February 9, 2011
http://www.irishtimes.com/
Afghanistan: Outrage at threat to secret shelters where women hide from death, The Scotsman, February 9, 2011
http://news.scotsman.com/
