Originally published on the CGS blog on February 6, 2014.
If you wanted to use the criminal justice system to abolish women’s rights and protections, you couldn’t do much better than the new law that Afghanistan is working on.
Parliament has approved a bill banning relatives of accused criminals from being questioned in cases against them. In other words, offenders like the in-laws of Sahar Gul—who chained the child bride in a basement before starving, whipping, and burning her because she refused to work as a prostitute for them— will evade prosecution because the victim is no longer allowed to testify. Neither are other relatives in the home who may have witnessed the crime.
This change in criminal procedure could not be more devastating to a country plagued by honor killings, forced and child marriage, and domestic abuse.
President Karzai is expected to receive the bill within the next few weeks for final signature into law. Groups like Human Rights Watch have called on the President to refuse to sign the law until it is revised to reflect the country’s prior commitments to women’s rights, including its 2003 ratification of the Women’s Equality Treaty, or CEDAW; its 2009 passage of the law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW); and its 2014 pledge to uphold that law at the country’s second Universal Periodic Review by the United Nations.
More recent coverage on the new law can be found here:
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/afghanistan-law-victims-violence-women
- http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/140204/proposed-afghan-law-protects-womens-abusers
- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/new-afghanistan-law-could-silence-women-who-are-victims-of-domestic-violence-9108408.html
