A couple of days ago at least four men entered the house of a girl and raped her and left her in critical condition in Moqor district. In another incident of violence, an Afghan man convicted of murdering three family members of his wife in Samangan province also killed his wife cold blooded while she was meeting him in the prison.
In the former month Nadia Sidiqi, the acting director of the women's affairs department, in the eastern province of Laghman, was shot dead by two unidentified men while on her way to work. It seems as if the evil sprites pledge not to withdraw callous and spiteful attitude towards women unless the law is effective and society is voiced.
The flawed cultural practices, hardened by high degree of illiteracy, ratify intense violence against women as legitimate and justified. The culture deeming women as subordinate citizen multiplies their receptiveness to greater tendency of being subjected to ill-treatment.
Apart from formal education, community based adult education and awareness campaigns on momentous right's issues complementary to Islamic teachings might assuage the stringency of substandard customary law. The wretchedness does not end here as the incidents of violence against women remain largely under-reported because of cultural restraints, social norms and religious beliefs.
Widespread discrimination and women's fears of social disgrace or threats to their lives discourage them from seeking to prosecute their offenders. The presence of such barricades and widespread violence against women in post-Taliban democratic Afghanistan in confirmation to UN survey reports is appalling.
Afghanistan enacted its Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) law in August 2009. Since then it criminalizes child marriage, retribution, assault, marriage before the legal age, forced marriages, humiliation, intimidation, persecution, forced isolation, self-immolation and more than a dozen other acts of violence and abuse against women.
Though a rising number of incidents of violence against women are being reported, and courts are issuing more convictions based on the law, but they represent only a fraction of the problem. Advances in using the law are welcomed; nevertheless progress in addressing violence against women will be limited until the law is applied more widely.
Afghan authorities are continuously called to take, much greater steps to both facilitate reporting of incidents of violence against women and launch immediate investigatory cells in districts and division level easing the prosecution.
As long as women and girls in Afghanistan are subject to violence with impunity, little meaningful and sustainable progress for women's rights can be achieved in the country. Ensuring rights for Afghan women – such as their participation in public life, including in the peace and reconciliation process and equal opportunities in education and employment – requires not only legal safeguards on paper, but critically, speedy and full enforcement of the EVAW law.