Topic about Violence against Afghan Women

Violence against women is one of the most serious human rights issues in Afghanistan. Although important achievements have been made in different areas such as education for women and girls, health and participation of women in civil and political activities during the last decade, deep-rooted cultural and social issues still exist against the realization of and their freedom in many parts of our country. Violence against women is one of the serious violations.

How women in Afghanistan are struggling to live with dignity. It also highlights how, in the face of little governmental support and dwindling international aid, women are stepping in to help one another.

 The country of 36 million people where America has waged its longest war. The war was billed, in part, as “a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” The Taliban ruled in Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, a period in which women were essentially invisible in public life, barred from going to school or working

As in all war-torn societies, women suffer disproportionately. Afghanistan is still ranked as the worst place in the world to be a woman. Despite the Afghan government and international donor efforts since 2001 to educate girls, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not attend school. Eighty-seven percent of Afghan women are illiterate, while 70-80 percent face forced marriage, many before the age of 16.

Government statistics from 2014 show that 80 percent of all suicides are committed by women, making Afghanistan one of the few places in the world where rates are higher among women. Psychologists attribute this anomaly to an endless cycle of domestic violence and poverty. The 2008 Global Rights survey found that nearly 90 percent of Afghan women have experienced domestic abuse.

Various forms of violence against women exists in Afghanistan. Physical, sexual, economic, verbal, and other types of violence related in one or another way to harmful traditions and customs.

A few List of incidents of violence against women:

• Bibi Aisha: her father-in-law, husband, and three other family members took Aisha into the mountains, cut off her nose and her ears, and left her to die


• Malalai Kakar: Malalai Kakar was shot dead between 7:00 am and 8:00 am in her car outside of her house while on the way to work. because she was a female Afghan police officer


• Sahar Gul: who that, she lost a lot of weight, her hands were covered with bruises and wounds, one of her hands was broken, but her mother-in-law was forcing her to do the laundry”. Her husband's family later put her in the cellar. In the cellar, her hands and feet were tied with a rope, she slept on the floor without a mattress, and was fed bread and water. She was beaten regularly, with most of the beatings coming from the elderly father of her husband. Her nails and clumps of her hair had been pulled out, and chunks of her flesh had been cut out with pliers. She was lying in hay and animal dung at the time of her discovery.


• Sushmita Banerjee: was a writer and activist from India in Afghanistan. She was killed by suspected Taliban militants in Paktika, Afghanistan.


• Farkhunda: Farkhunda, was a 27-year-old woman who was publicly lynched by an angry mob in Kabul, Afghanistan. The mob dragged Farkhunda into the street and savagely beat and stomped her. She was bludgeoned with sticks and rocks outside the mosque, then placed into the road and run over with a car, dragging her body 300 feet. Police offered no resistance and directed traffic around the scene. The mob then dragged her body to the nearby bank of the Kabul River, took turns stoning her, and set her on fire; her body was soaked in blood and would not burn, so the crowd ripped off articles of their own clothing to ignite and maintain the fire. The mob shouted the Takbir during the lynching


• Rokhsahana: a young 19-year-old girl stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan because she eloped to marry the man of her choice.