DUBAI: The United Nations has called on the Afghanistan government to improve women's rights in the country and eliminate widespread traditional customs that harm women and girls, including child marriage, honor killings and the giving of girls to settle disputes. The UN issued a detailed report on Thursday highlighting what it said was a way forward for women's rights in the central Asian country. The report by the UN mission in Afghanistan revealed that religious leaders often reinforced the customs by invoking their interpretation of Islam. “In most cases, however, these practices are inconsistent with Sharia (Islamic) law as well as Afghan and international law, and violate the human rights of women,” the report said. Researchers found such practices in varying degrees across the country and among all ethnic groups, based on 150 individual and group interviews this year in 29 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. “Forced marriage is not a harmful tradition in our culture,” a man on the Faryab provincial in northern Afghanistan told researchers. “I know my daughter's best interests and since she does not leave the house, she does not understand the world and it will not be possible or acceptable for her to choose her own husband.” The UN urged the implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women, which was enacted in 2009 and that criminalizes actions including buying and selling women for marriage and child marriage. Malalai Hajan, a 32-year-old mother of three and activist, told Bikya Masr via telephone from Kabul that she hopes the UN report is not simply turned over and used as a “coaster in government offices.” She added that “Afghan women deserve a chance to have our voices heard by our leaders because it is our right to live a life we choose.” Hajan was positive that the new report will not be washed over by government officials, but worried that “local tribe leaders could use it as a way of trying to show that the West thinks it knows best, even when there are thousands of women who feel what is said in the report is appropriate.” Life expectancy in Afghanistan, mainly a rural country, is at 44-years-old, among the lowest globally. Women, often a subject in Western press, gained even more coverage earlier this year when TIME magazine used a woman who said her nose and ears were cut off as punishment for running away from her violent husband. BM
