Oxfam responds to the critical situation in locust-affected West Africa
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U.N. sleuth hits Afghanistan over women's rights
10 Feb 2005 17:27:22 GMT
Source: Reuters
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GENEVA, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A United Nations investigator on Thursday urged Afghanistan's government to make more effort to promote the rights of women and especially to halt violence against them both inside and outside the home. In a statement following a visit to the country earlier this month, Egyptian lawyer Cherif Bassiouni also called on the Afghan authorities to strengthen the rule of law, including the prison, justice and police system. In a brief report, he said he was concerned over the situation of women -- three years after the ouster by U.S.-led forces of the government of the rigidly Islamist Taliban -- and their access to justice. After U.S. forces went into Afghanistan in November 2001, formally to track down leaders of the al-Qaeda movement which Washington says ordered the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, President George W. Bush said Afghan women were free again. But Bassiouni's report, although couched in diplomatic terms, gave a less positive picture. A key problem, he said, was "the potential for human rights abuses to be committed in the context of the so-called customary system of justice" -- or religious-based adjudications which can include physical mutilation as punishment. "Continuing violence against women, especially in the domestic context, must be addressed," Bassiouni added. The statement followed a tough report this week by another U.N. rights investigator on the situation of women in Afghanistan's fellow Islamic nation and neighbour Iran. Turkish law professor Yakin Erturk said Iranian women face unfair laws and "malfunction" in the administration of justice which perpetuate discrimination and violence against women and often allow rape to go unpunished. Both investigators are due to give more details of their findings to the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission at its annual six-week session in March and April -- but no rulings by the 53-member body are binding. Bassiouni said he was "gravely concerned" at allegations of arrest, detention, mistreatment and even torture of local people by foreign forces -- in the country to support the administration of President Hamid Karzai. But he gave no details of the allegations or from where they came.
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