OVERVIEW
As of yet there has been limited research
regarding the nature and extent of violence against women in Afghanistan.
The service-based research(1) carried out for this report seeks to begin
to fill this void. For the purpose of this study, UNIFEM Afghanistan analyzed
data collected by organizations and agencies working throughout the country.
Through this study, UNIFEM seeks to raise awareness about violence against
women by shedding light on the types of violence being committed against
women, the victims and perpetrators of such violence, the manner in which
data is collected on violence against women, and the way referrals, meaning
the system whereby victims of violence are guided to the right organisations
and institutions that can provide them with the needed professional support,
are being made.
Nonetheless, there are many questions that this report raises that remain unanswered. In order to answer those questions, stakeholders will need to reassess the extent of the information that they are currently gathering. It is hoped that pointing to the shortcomings within this report will encourage relevant actors to conduct research that will give answers to the questions raised in this report. This will provide the information necessary to develop laws, policies and strategies that will effectively address the issue of violence against women in Afghanistan.
For the purposes of this study, UNIFEM assembled 1,327 cases from 818 respondents. This data had previously been collected by 17 organizations between January 1, 2003 and June 30, 2005. Although few details about the victims were collected, of the information collected we know that at least:
- 64.1% (850/1327 cases) of the women are married;
- 32.9% (437/1327 cases) are between the ages of 16 and 35; and
- 24.2% (321/1327 cases) are illiterate.
According to the results in the data set:
- 73.5% of the total violent acts committed against women were perpetrated solely by one person;
- The most common perpetrators were family members, including intimate partners (82.0%);
- Physical (30.7%) and psychological (30.1%) violence were committed in equal proportion, and sexual violence represents 25.2% of the violence. The remaining percentage (14%) represents combinations of the three types of violence or unavailable data.
These results, culled from organizations that work on women's rights, do not reflect an overall estimate of the occurrence rate of violence against women in Afghanistan. Given the worldwide trend of under-reporting of cases of violence against women and the severe restraints that prevent women in Afghanistan from reporting acts of violence against them we can assume that the recorded cases evaluated for this study are only a snapshot of the violence being committed throughout the country.
The results of this research should be seen as an impetus for the State, its agencies and other organizations to begin systematically and comprehensively recording violence against women. Government officials, policy makers, and development practitioners have, as of yet, been restricted in developing policy and reforming applicable laws by the lack of reliable data on violence against women. Carrying out thorough research on the nature of violence against women as well as the victims and perpetrators of such violence will drastically improve the capacity of such actors to design and implement initiatives intended to eradicate violence against women.
Footnotes
(1) A service-based study is one that makes use of information collected through public and private agencies that came into contact with abused women, even if the violence was not the main reason for the contact. (UN Division for the Advancement of Women. "Violence against women: a statistical overview, challenges and gaps in data collection and methodology and approaches for overcoming them." Geneva, Switzerland, April 2005, p. 13)
(2) UNICEF and Innocenti Research Center. "Domestic Violence against Women and Girls," Innocenti Digest, No. 6. Florence, Italy, June 2000, p.1; Amnesty International, It's in Our Hands. Stop Violence Against Women, London, United Kingdom, 2004, p.1.
(3) World Health Organization. 2005. Summary report. WHO Multi-Country Study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence against Women. Initial results on prevalence, ealth outcomes and women's responses. Geneva, Switzerland. p.1.
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