Afghanistan: Rise in Female Runaways

Sima, 27, spent five years in prison for the supposed crime of running away with the boy she loved.

She told IWPR that her family had wanted her to marry a rich man who was 20 years older, but that she had wanted someone else.

"The boy that I loved made several marriage proposals but my family didn't agree because he was poor, and so I was then forced to run away with him," explained Sima (not her real name), adding that they had considered handing themselves in to the police but decided not to for fear of abuse.

"I had heard that the security and justice organisations were the worst places for girls and women because they would be sexually abused there, even worse than in a brothel."

Since her release last year, Sima has been living with a relative far away from her family. She still has no idea what happened to the boy she had run away with.

Officials in Kabul say that the numbers of girls and women imprisoned for running away from home is on the rise. According to the women's affairs ministry, 88 cases were registered in the first three months of this year compared to 68 in the same period last year.

In Afghanistan, female runaways can be imprisoned under the loose category of moral crimes. The shame associated with such cases means their families sometimes refuse to take them back.

In conservative Afghan society, many decisions about a woman's future are taken by male family members. Observers say customary law takes precedence over Islamic law, which gives women the right to choose their own husband and forbids forced marriage.

Farzana Safi, head of the ministry's women's rights department, said that forced marriage and poverty were some of the reasons more and more girls were running away.

"There is more poverty in insecure regions. Families marry their daughters off with old men for money. Because their daughters are not happy with this, they feel forced to run away from home," she said.

Safi added that the influence of the media had also had an effect on the hopes and dreams girls had for their futures.

"Watching TV dramas and serials has raised these girls' expectations. When their families cannot meet them, they get in touch with boys, are taken in by them and run away."

Faridoon Obaidi, head of criminal investigations in Kabul, also said phenomena like foreign soap operas and mobile phones were giving girls unrealistic expectations and reducing the influence of the family.

"Girls envy each other, want to wear fashionable clothes, have good phones, ride in expensive cars and wear gold jewelry," he said. "When their families cannot provide them with all of this, they get in contact with boys, are deceived and run away from home."

However, human rights workers say that this is a superficial interpretation of the situation.

"Three or four cases [of female runaways] are registered with the commission every day, most of which are because of family violence and girls not being allowed to choose their own spouses, which is their legal right," said Shabnam Say'a, the deputy head of women's rights at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

Lawyer Sayed Ajmal Atif argued that the courts should be more fair-minded as many female runaways were under severe mental or physical stress at home.

But he added that although running away from home itself was not illegal, adultery was indeed a punishable offence.

"Girls and women who are sentenced to imprisonment are those who commit adultery after they escape from home. That's why they are sentenced to imprisonment, although they think that they have been punished of simply for running away."

Prosecutor Qudsia Niazi agreed that women were punished for immoral acts they were supposed to have carried out after running away from home.

"In the past, the punishment for adultery was one to seven years imprisonment, but it has now decreased to five years," she said.

Niazi added that officials needed to tackle the reasons women ran away from the families, and stressed that the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women had to be implemented.

This was enacted by presidential decree in 2009 and prohibited a range of abuses from assault and rape to marriages that are coercive, involve minors or amount to a transaction between two families. However, the law was rejected by parliament in May 2013, and has been shelved ever since.

Shahla Farid, a political science lecturer at Kabul university, suggested that a special judicial committee should be created in order to investigate such cases fairly.

"Most of the claims about the women and girls who run away from home are baseless, and without proper investigation, no one should issue a final judgment about them," she said.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that many women and girls report being sexually assaulted by policemen after their arrest, further deterring runaways from seeking help from the authorities.

Obaidi denied that officers abused female detainees.

"I disagree with such claims, and the police never commit such crimes because they don't keep female prisoners in police stations. The female prisoners are sent to prisons, but criminals always try to somehow accuse the police."

The spokesperson of the attorney general's office did not respond to requests for comment on allegations of abuse.

Meanwhile, women continue to languish in prison for trying to make basic choices about their own lives.

Palwasha (not her real name) was sentenced to just over five years in Pul-e Charkhi prison for running away with the man she loved.

Weeping, the 30-year-old divorcee told IWPR, "My family married me off to an old man, with whom I absolutely did not want to live.

"My in-laws' family beat me, but I stayed with him despite all these problems until my husband married another woman and divorced me," she continued. "After that I ran away with the man I had loved before my marriage but whom my family had refused. Since my arrest, I have spent my life in this prison."

Palwasha said that the whole justice system was prejudiced against women, adding, "I agree I made a mistake, but the punishment given to me isn't fair either."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.