A new law passed in Afghanistan has removed women's rights, effectively legalising rape within marriage and preventing women leaving their homes without permission. The law permits Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to meet their husbands' sexual requests. The new legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to the father and grandfathers and means that a woman requires her husbands permission to work.
Human Rights Watch says the law "also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her,". The watchdog's Asia director, Brad Adams, described the legislation as "barbaric" and said that such repressive laws "were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his stamp of approval."
The legislation says that a woman must be in "readiness...to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment," and outlaws a wife "from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission."
The original law was proposed several months ago and was met with international condemnation including criticism from Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. The earlier version legalised rape within marriage but the modified law still contains many repressive measure.
The introduction of this law comes in the run up to the presidential election and it is speculated that Hamid Karzai approved the law in an attempt to gain Shia votes. The election next Thursday is expected to be close and the incumbent president has been appeasing minority leaders in an attempt to gain votes. Hardline Shia cleric, Ayatollah Mohseni, is thought to have influence over many Shia voters and is strongly in favour of the measures set forth in the new law.
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