Afghan judiciary flaws seen

KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations says Afghanistan’s court system is failing to provide adequate access to women who are victims of violence.

In a report released Sunday, “Justice Through the Eyes of Afghan Women,” the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said more women are turning to nonjudicial methods, such as local mediation councils, rather than the traditional court system.

The 35-page report, produced in cooperation with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, consists of a series of interviews with 110 women across 18 of the nation’s provinces between August 2014 and February 2015. The vast majority of those interviewed chose to resolve their disputes through mediation rather than legal means.

Though the Elimination of Violence Against Women law, passed by presidential decree in 2009, criminalized 22 acts of violence, the U.N. found factors that caused women to shun the courts.

Along with fear of corruption, women in Afghanistan felt they lacked a clear understanding of how the law would be applied to their cases, the report says.

Also, with increasing economic insecurity and unemployment, women feared alienating or imprisoning the men who are most often the sole breadwinners of their households.

The report found at least six cases in which a woman complainant was not present during mediation. Of 80 cases that were seen through to completion, only five resulted in convictions.

Though the U.N. favors referring cases of violence against women to the courts, women’s rights activists said that until the judiciary is rid of corruption and reaches the entire nation, the value of mediation cannot be discounted.

Despite the “assumption that mediation is anti-woman, often it is also a lasting, long-term solution to domestic violence,” said Orzala Ashraf Nemat, a women’s rights activist who has worked on cases of violence against women.