UN Special Representative Eide urges Afghans to challenge violence against women

8 Jul 2009

UN Special Representative Eide urges Afghans to challenge violence against women

KABUL - UN Special Representative Kai Eide warned on Wednesday that violence against women in Afghanistan was not being faced up to within the community and said this was holding Afghanistan back. 

Eide, the top UN official in Afghanistan, told a meeting in Kabul that political and other leaders had to address this issue more vigorously and not leave it to human rights activists or women alone.

“The problem isn’t that violence against women is being condoned. It’s not,” said Eide. “The problem is that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned. And that has implications both for countless individual victims and for the country’s future development.”

The meeting at which Eide was speaking was held to launch a joint UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan / Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights report into violence against women. The report focuses on violence that inhibits the participation of women in public life and sexual violence in the context of rape. It is aimed at helping Afghanistan tackle issues relating to women’s rights as the country recovers from more than 30 years of war. The report found that rape was going under-reported, with shame being attached to rape victims rather than the perpetrators.

“Afghanistan is clearly in need of a determined effort to address such violence and its associated problems,” said Eide. “We stand ready to help, but this is not something that can be imposed upon society from outside. It has to come from the community and I hope the recommendations in this report will be taken as a starting point.”

Violence against women report 8 July 2009: English - Dari - Pashto