(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.”