FILE: Zareena, left, and Shakeela, internally displaced Afghan ladies play exterior a shanty at a refugee camp within the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 25, 2011.
Dar Yasin/AP
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Dar Yasin/AP
KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations expressed “grave concern” on Thursday a few new regulation issued by Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities on separation in marriage which incorporates provisions on youngster marriage, saying the code additional entrenches discrimination in opposition to girls and ladies.
The federal government rejected the accusations, saying the decree follows Islamic regulation and insisting the nation has already banned the pressured marriage of ladies.
Afghanistan’s justice ministry printed Decree No. 18 “on judicial separation of spouses” final week, which units out guidelines for separation of a married couple.
Amongst its most controversial provisions, it says that the silence of a lady reaching puberty may be interpreted as consent to marriage. It additionally features a part on the separation of ladies who attain puberty and are married, which “implies that child marriage is permitted,” the United Nations Help Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) stated in a press release.
“This undermines the principle of free and full consent and failing to safeguard the best interests of the child,” it stated.
The decree stipulates {that a} marriage may be dominated invalid “if a father or grandfather has given a minor girl or boy without any dowry, not enough dowry or obscene embezzlement.” It additionally says {that a} woman given away in marriage by her father or grandfather to a person who “has not treated her with kindness or is well-known for his bad choices…has the right to approach the court to cancel the marriage contract upon reaching puberty.”
Nonetheless, if a lady asks her husband for a divorce and he denies it, “then in this case, there are no witnesses with the girl, the husband’s word is valid,” the brand new regulation says. She doesn’t want witnesses if she makes the request earlier than a decide.
Ladies and ladies already face widespread discrimination in Afghanistan, with legal guidelines dictating how they need to costume and behave. They’re banned from secondary faculty and universities and from most jobs, in addition to from practically all leisure actions, together with gyms, magnificence salons and even from public parks.
“Decree No. 18 is part of a broader and deeply concerning trajectory in which the rights of Afghan women and girls are being eroded,” stated Georgette Gagnon, the U.N.’s Deputy Particular Consultant of the Secretary-Basic and officer answerable for UNAMA.
Whereas the regulation permits for ladies to separate from their husbands, it makes it a lot more durable for them to take action than it does for males.
The decree “operates in a deeply unequal framework: while men retain the unilateral right to divorce, women must pursue complex and restrictive judicial avenues to separate from a spouse,” UNAMA stated. “This situation reinforces structural discrimination and limits women’s autonomy in matters fundamental to their dignity, safety, and well-being.”
After seizing energy in Afghanistan following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-backed forces in 2021, the Taliban introduced sure restricted rights for ladies, issuing a decree that included the suitable for ladies to an inheritance and to refuse marriage. Nonetheless, “successive decrees have undermined these protections,” UNAMA stated.
The myriad restrictions imposed by the federal government “have deprived millions of Afghan women and girls of their right to education, weakened economic participation, and deepened poverty, with long-term consequences for Afghanistan’s development,” it added.
The objections from “those who contradict the religion of Islam are not new and we should not pay attention to them,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan authorities, informed the RTA state broadcaster in an interview.
Mujahid famous that Afghanistan’s supreme chief Hibatullah Akhundzada has already issued a earlier decree that bans the pressured marriage of ladies. Afghan courts and the nation’s ministry of vice and advantage have investigated hundreds of such instances previously yr alone, he stated, “which shows the Islamic Emirate’s concern for women’s rights.”
