DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN AFGHANISTAN IS ‘ENDEMIC,’ PERPETRATORS GO
UNPUNISHED – UN STUDY
New York, Aug 14 2006 6:00PM
Domestic violence against Afghan women appears endemic, and attacks
against them usually take place with impunity, according to a disturbing
new report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women
(<"http://www.unifem.org/index.php?f_page_pid=6">UNIFEM).

Uncounted and Discounted, a study of more than 1,300 cases
reported to authorities between January 2003 and June 2005, found that
violence against women – whether sexual, physical or psychological – affects
all branches of Afghan society, regardless of the woman’s marital
status or her level of education or employment.

At a briefing in Kabul today, UNIFEM’s Afghanistan Director Meryem
Aslan told reporters that local women seeking help from violence need
improved access to public services, given that the traditional support
structure for women – the family – is often the source of the violence.

“I would guess if Afghanistan progresses better economically, and women
and men in this country get a better economic situation, women will at
least be able to seek help more easily,” she said.

More than eight out of every 10 acts of violence is committed by a
family member such as a husband, father-in-law, son or cousin. In many of
the remaining cases the perpetrator is someone known to the woman. The
study found that women committed about 10 per cent of the violent acts.

Ms. Aslan cited several examples of cases examined in the study,
including one where village elders ruled that a six-year-old girl who had
been promised in marriage to an older man who then died should marry
another member of his family instead, despite the girl’s refusal. In another
case, a woman was charged and jailed for adultery was then raped by
prison guards and not allowed to see her children.

The study was conducted in part because there is very little research
or formal records of violence against in women, Ms. Aslan added, and
most experts suspect that the violence is widely under-reported.

But she said there are limited attempts to tackle the problem,
including safe houses for victims of domestic violence in the cities of Kabul,
Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif and some legal aid programmes.

To Government of Iran

I condemn the stoning of the Iranian woman for whatever reason or crime she could have committed.
not only because she was innocent but because such a punishment is not justifable.
The alleged crime is subjective and discriminatory only to the women folk of that country.

Stop killing the women, they are the future, they bare children, raise children and protect families through home management and contribute to economic growth through so many ways.

stop this barbaric acts

Please.

WOMENS CRUELTY TO WOMEN
By Olivia Phiri

Sharp is the word that comes to mind at the moment. Wondering why? Really its something I rarely consider, the sharpness of an item unless am about to cut tomato with a knife or something.

Men unlike women often find it easy to compare habits to women’s behavior, like don’t be shy like a woman or weak like a woman, it just shows stupidity and lack of vocabulary. Now to think that a woman would criticize another woman for defending such a statement is ironic and rather just not sharp.

Not clever at all. Its like cutting a tomato with a blunt knife from its tip. Have we women stopped to consider what the other sex thinks of us when we do not stand up together, for each other? They call us disorganized and find it easy to call us names.

Who can we say is to blame for such behavior, our mothers and their mothers and the list is endless. It is the sins of the mothers. Women find it so easy to humiliate, subject torture or ridicule and inflict pain on each other than they would to the opposite sex.

In short women are cruel to women.

This is in relation to the Post’s column war that has recently been wedged against Sara Longwe who stood for women’s intergrity and refused to be called cowardice, because women by nature are not. Next a woman from the Copperbelt, Mrs Mulenga Phiri if I have the name right tells Sara to appreciate her femininity. So this Mulenga woman believes that she is cowardice and weak, that is her own judgement of her capabilities as a person but not respresent ing the entire women folk.

Women through history have been known to be defenders of families, protectors of husbands, with unknown strength when giving birth or taking care of their children.

I have frankly read this reactions over and over as a woman and fellow activist in the fight for equity, equal gender representation and justice for all, I say women support one another.

Why cant we wake up from the slumber of being objects to become intelligent loving beings that would appreciate success within and among our own sex?