The Afghan government has come up with a new penal code, by a decree, which has set harsher punishments for the cruelty or mistreatment of animals than for domestic violence against women.
This decree, the experts say, further solidifies into the law of inequality based on gender and social status. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has urged Afghan authorities to rescind the decree. “This decree defines several crimes and punishments that contravene Afghanistan's international legal obligations,” Turk has said to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday.
This new decree was signed by Afghanistan's Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhunzada in January this year. The decree is comprised of 119 articles, and number 12 lays out penalties for women who visit their relatives without their husband's permission.
It also allows the husband and the heads of the households to determine and mete out punishment in their own homes, the Associated Press has reported.
Turk said that the decree provides for the use of corporal punishment for numerous offences, including in the home. “It legitimises violence against women and children, and it criminalises criticism of the de facto leadership, in violation of freedom of expression.”
The authorities in Afghanistan have often issued laws and bans, including a ban on the education of girls beyond primary school and women working in most of the jobs.
This decree, however, marks the first full penal code issued by the Afghan authorities. This decree, as per the AP report, states that a man who beats his wife severely enough to cause a cut, wound or bruise faces 15 days in prison if the wife can prove it to the judge.
But if the woman leaves her husband's house and goes to her father's home without her husband's permission, she can be punished with a 3-month jail term. So do her relatives, if they do not return her to her husband.
Ironically, penalties for cruelty against or mistreatment of animals are way harsher. The decree sets a jail-term of five months for anyone having animals or birds fight, given the fact that animal and bird fighting is a favourite pastime in Afghan society. The Taliban has banned it already.
The decree also sets out different punishments for the same crime, depending on the social class. In certain crimes, punishment for clerics is only a warning and corporal punishment for those belonging to the lower strata of society.
Scholars and “high-ranking people” face a warning from a judge; tribal leaders and businessmen receive a warning and court summons; the “average people of the society” face prison time; and “the lower classes” are subject to physical beatings, according to the report. Murders, however, face the death penalty regardless of the social status or the rank of the perpetrator.
U.N Women Special Representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson, asserted that the decree formally removes equality between men and women before the law. “It places husbands in a position of authority over their wives, and limits the women's ability to seek protection or justice,” Susan has said in the statement.
Meanwhile, Turk, speaking in Geneva, said that the Afghan authorities should reverse their course “on excluding half the population. Women and girls are present, and the future, and the country cannot thrive without them.”
Also Read: Pakistan Declares 'Open War' On Afghanistan: What Triggered Fresh Tensions?
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