Women jailed for ‘running away’ in Afghanistan

(September 24, 2012) High-level Afghan government officials have for the first time publicly confirmed that it is not a criminal offense for women and girls to ‘run away’ from home. The officials also confirmed fleeing violence or running away was not a basis for women’s detention or prosecution. The United States-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Afghan government to take immediate steps to end the unlawful imprisonment of women and girls accused of “running away.” A report by the rights watchdog in March found up to 70 percent of the approximately 700 female prisoners in Afghanistan have been imprisoned for running away, nearly always for fleeing forced marriage or domestic violence. “The public pledges by top Afghan government officials to end wrongful imprisonment of women and girls fleeing abuse sends an important message of equal rights for women,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Now the onus is on President Karzai and his government to promptly free the women and girls who have lost months or years of their lives on these bogus charges,” Adams added.
At a September 16, 2012 meeting, Justice Minister Habibullah Ghalib, Women’s Affairs Minister Hassan Banoo Ghazanfar, and Deputy Interior Minister Baz Mohammad Yarmand each strongly condemned wrongful imprisonment of women and girls on charges of “running away.” Ghalib said that police and prosecutors should never send cases of “running away” to the courts. Yarmand pledged his commitment to ending abuses by the police, saying that all police had been instructed that running away is not a crime. Ghazanfar said that women and girls accused of running away are not criminals, but generally crime victims who flee to escape violence committed against them. Fawzia Koofi, director of the lower house parliamentary committee on women’s affairs, and her counterpart, Siddiqa Balkhi, the director of the upper house parliamentary committee on women's affairs, had joined together in calling for the government to immediately free women and girls charged with running away under Afghanistan’s ambiguous and arbitrary “moral crimes” law. Human Rights Watch research in six prisons and juvenile detention centers has found that some 50 percent of women in prison and some 95 percent of girls in juvenile detention are accused of so-called “moral crimes.”