Independent Appeal: A legal light in the Afghan dark

[IndianaGreen]

Independent Appeal: A legal light in the Afghan dark

By Kim Sengupta in Mazar-i-Sharif

Saturday, 2 January 2010

The girl is 15 years old but looks younger, a frightened figure abandoned by her family, facing a bleak future in a country at war. Rahima was raped but her attacker is free and unlikely to face prosecution. Eight years after "liberation" from the Taliban, women remain vulnerable and victimised in large swathes of Afghanistan.

The northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif is one of the few places that women like Rahima receive support in shelters where paralegals act on their behalf. The scheme, supported by ActionAid – which is one of the three charities in this year's Independent Christmas Appeal – is being extended to the south.

The need is great: sexual violence against women has been steadily increasing. The government has been accused not just of failure to protect women but acquiescing to legalised rape within marriage. A law to this effect passed into the statute books with no opposition from President Hamid Karzai. It was withdrawn for modifications only after an international outcry.

Rahima was 14 when she was assaulted and became pregnant. The "justice" handed to her by a family court was to order the attacker, a 20-year-old neighbour who already had a wife, to marry her. In the event her rapist produced a faked marriage certificate purporting to show that the marriage had already taken place at the time of the assault and thus, no crime had been committed. Rahima's baby has been given away for adoption.

"This is a terrible story, but I am afraid there are many more like it," said Nasima Rahmani, ActionAid's chief coordinator on women's rights. "This girl is the one who has suffered, but the system is so one-sided that it is she who is now suffering.

"It is a really uphill struggle. Most people think that the 'rape in marriage' law was repealed. But, in reality, it is just being changed and the conservative MPs want to keep in things which are still pretty oppressive."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/appeals/indy-appeal/independent-appeal-a-legal-light-in-the-afghan-dark-1855405.html