Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Violence against Women Would End With Unified Efforts!

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Violence against Women Would End With Unified Efforts!

She is one of the brilliant students of the institute and keen to learn English. Her performance is really impressive because it is the result of both interest and hard-work and her teacher praises her in these words, ‘She is one of those ideal students who make the teaching process more meaningful for the teacher’, but when it starts getting dark in the last moments of her class, she starts worrying. ‘As the darkness of night falls, I worry how I would reach to my home because it would be dark on the road and in the street’ she says. It is the reason why she took admission in a class that starts at 4 PM and ends at 5:30 but she says, ‘I was happy that this time would be suitable for me to reach home before the dark but now that the days are getting short sharply, every passing day would make me more worried.’ In this class of English as a secondary language, there are also present 9 other girls and they make the majority of the class. They say, ‘It is not easy for us to go out of our house for work and study and when we saw that many of our friends were able to come at the same time, we all came together and enrolled ourselves in the institute’. Sudden outflow of easy and plenty money had both positive and negative effects on Afghan society and these effects can more clearly be noticed in the capital city of Kabul. The city that included of thousands of ruined houses in the regime of Taliban, has now expanded vastly and wherever one glances, can see the tall buildings and beautiful houses. Majority of the roads have been paved, dwellers of city enjoy 24/7 uninterrupted electricity, number of private universities and institutes of higher education exceed 100 and Kabul airport is one of the busiest airports in the region. But at the same time, it had some negative effects on the people, especially of Kabul. People experienced their lives being driven from destruction and deprivation into prosperity and joys in a very short span of time and thus there are many people who live in high airs and have no fear or respect for laws.

In the old Afghan society, woman was not given many rights but at the same time, they were considered worthy of being respected and in this regard, people were very much sentimental. They would never allow anyone to tease, shout on or misbehave with a girl passing on the street. An old person recalls, ‘In our times, it was taken very bad that a young man should shout on or tease a girl and such a person was not tolerated in the society but today, when a girl is teased, others keep smiling and the frightened girl quickly leaves the spot while the teaser gets more courage to do the same again. Sometimes, we would force a family to leave the area just because that a member of the family was not good with females of the area.’ But problems for present day girls of Kabul are even more serious than it is perceived. Now, teasing a girl has become something of routine and there were many incidents when a girl was kidnapped from the street or road for rape, some girls were raped and tortured in different parts of the city and in worst cases, they were murdered for their resistance against their rape.

Those who put hands in such extreme crimes are not common people. A common person can only tease a girl by passing some flying remarks when she is passing but he would never dare to go to such extremes mentioned earlier. Such serious crimes are committed by those who are certain that, in case they are caught, no one would be able to punish them. This mentality of considering one’s own above than any law and having no fear of accountability seems to be prime reason of these problems. A girl gave these remarks for this situation, ‘We have no hope of any kind of help from any member of society and police because we are sure that a common person would not like to create any kind of problem for himself by interfering in other’s issue and police is not strong enough to do anything against people who are both politically and financially very strong. We know that only we, the girls, or our family members can do anything and there seems to be the law of jungle in the city.’

In old times, one of the most influential factors found effective against problems were the cultural values and social norms but a person says, ‘Since the modern lifestyle became the prime objective and preference of the people, they started feeling that old traditions and social values were barriers in their journey towards success and thus these values and norms gradually lost their importance and now they no more play their effective role as was the case in past.’

The problem of eve-teasing is one of the few problems which is equally faced by underdeveloped and developed countries and it is a strange fact that cosmopolitan cities are facing this problem with increased intensity while the cities or towns where old traditions and customs are given more importance by people, intensity of the problem is less. Increasing cases of rape and consequent murders in one of the most populated cities of the world, Mumbai got the attention of people and media in last two years. But in big cities of the world, two things act as a barrier against this problem, i.e., state laws and punishments and general education and awareness in public when they voluntarily avoid these problems keeping in view the rights of women. Anyhow, these two factors don’t equally apply for all and it is the reason, the graph of eve-teasing and consequent complications is high in a number of well-educated societies of the world. When we consider the case of Kabul and some other cities and towns of country with this perspective, we discover that both the mentioned factors are not working properly. The ineffective role of police has already been mentioned and there is present a very small number of truly educated people who realize the true respect and rights of women and show responsibility in this regard.

In all the Islamic societies, religion and its laws play their vital role in controlling the thoughts and behaviors of people and these laws strictly forbid their followers to tease the girls but these guidelines are not taken much seriously in society where material success has become the prime objective of people and majority of people are not mentally willing to give much importance to religion and its orders.

No doubt, there are large numbers of NGOs working for the welfare of Afghan women and they also include of a number of international NGOs but their efforts have not made any evident effect on the conditions of Afghan women. Important field to work on is to bring coordination between the preachers of mosques, scholars in University and officers in police and other law-enforcing agencies. When all the agents responsible for the protection of women will sit and devise a unified plan, end result would definitely be better and fruitful.  

Muhammad Rasool Shah works as Academic Coordinator at Barakat Int’l School, Kabul. He can reached at muhammadrasoolshah@gmail.com.

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