KABUL, May 18: Conservative and religious lawmakers in Afghanistan blocked legislation on Saturday aimed at strengthening provisions for women’s freedoms, arguing that parts of it violated Islamic principles and encouraged disobedience.
The fierce opposition highlights how tenuous women’s rights remain in Afghanistan a dozen years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban government.
Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada, a conservative lawmaker for Herat province, said the legislation was withdrawn shortly after being introduced in parliament because of an uproar by religious parties who said parts of the law were un-Islamic.
“Whatever is against Islamic law, we don’t even need to talk about,” Shaheedzada said. The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women has been in effect since 2009, but only by presidential decree.
It is being brought before parliament now because lawmaker Fawzia Kofi, a women’s rights activist, wants to cement it with a parliamentary vote to prevent its potential reversal by any future president who might be tempted to repeal it to satisfy hard-line parties.
The law criminalises, among other things, child marriage and forced marriage, and bans “baad”, the traditional practice of exchanging girls and women to settle disputes. It makes domestic violence a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and specifies that rape victims should not face criminal charges for fornication or adultery.
Ms Kofi, who might run for president in next year’s elections, said she was disappointed because among those who opposed upgrading the law from presidential decree to legislation passed by parliament were women.
Afghanistan’s parliament has more than 60 female lawmakers, mostly due to constitutional provisions reserving certain seats for women.
There has been spotty enforcement of the law as it stands. A United Nations analysis in late 2011 found that only a small percentage of reported crimes against women were pursued by the Afghan government.
Between March 2010 and March 2011 — the first full Afghan year the decree was in effect — prosecutors filed criminal charges in only 155 cases, or 7 per cent of the total number of crimes reported.
The child marriage ban and the idea of protecting female rape victims from prosecution were particularly heated subjects in Saturday’s parliamentary debate, said Nasirullah Sadiqizada Neli, a conservative lawmaker from Daykundi province.
Mr Neli suggested that removing the custom — common in Afghanistan —of prosecuting raped women for adultery would lead to social chaos, with women freely engaging in extramarital sex safe in the knowledge they could claim rape if caught.
Another lawmaker, Mandavi Abdul Rahmani of Balkh province, also opposed the law’s rape provision. “Adultery itself is a crime in Islam, whether it is by force or not,” he said.
He said the Quran also made it clear that a husband had a right to beat a disobedient wife as a last resort, as long as she was not permanently harmed. “But in this law,” he said, “It says if a man beats his wife at all, he should be jailed for three months to three years.”
Lawmaker Shaheedzada also claimed that the law might encourage disobedience among girls and women, saying it reflected Western values not applicable in Afghanistan.—AP
