Authorities in the women’s affairs department in Daikundi province have reported 165 cases of girls fleeing home to escape untenable situation of poverty and rigid patriarchy.
Authorities in the provincial women affairs’ presidency and the Daikundi chapter of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commiission (AIHRC) say not only has this become a trend over the past few years but there is a worsening of violence against women in the province and, also, many of the girls are ending up in jail.
Killid was able to interview a few girls.
Sakina (name changed) has been living in a shelter for the last two years. She had eloped with a boy who had promised to marry her but he could not persuade his family to accept her for fear of offending her powerful uncle.
Through the interview Sakina sat with her head bowed in deep embarrassment.
She said that a year after her mother’s death, her father, a drug addict, threw her and her siblings – two sisters and one brother – out of the house, which he sold, along with everything that was in the house, for money to support his drug habit.
“My father is behind all the disasters I have faced,” she said angrily, wiping away tears. Her father’s brother took the children in, but soon her aunt made life difficult for Sakina – who is considered “beautiful” – since her three sons were vying with each other to marry their cousin. Her aunt considered Sakina, the daughter of a drug addict even though he was her brother-in-law, a bad match for her sons. The mental and physical abuse had become unbearable when a relative of her aunt’s who happened to visit the house asked to marry Sakina. Unfortunately her uncle, who considered his niece his property, asked for a dowry of 100,000 Afs, and the boy’s family had to back off. In frustration Sakina fled her uncle’s home with a boy from the neighbourhood called Khudadad. His family refused to let him marry Sakina for fear of provoking her uncle who is one of the most influential people in the district. In a women’s shelter ever since Sakina confesses she has no idea what will happen to her.
Another girl from Daikundi province, Ruqia eloped for fear that no one would be able to meet her father’s huge dowry demand. At 20, she said she was receiving many offers of marriage in the province’s Shahrestan district. “But my father was asking between 800,000 and 1 million Afs,” she told Killid. “Money had more value for my father and brothers than me. The only man who was ready to pay the dowry had two wives and eight sons. I fled with a boy who I liked who was from Bamyan province.”
The two married in the presence of his family but immediately after the ceremony her mother-in-law “took the shawl off my face and told me to stop day dreaming.” “I cannot accept you as bride as you are a fugitive,” she told Ruqia.
For two years her husband stood up for her against his family but then he turned against her, and one day he beat her so violently that he broke the bones in one of her legs and hands. “My husband told me to get out of the house,” says Ruqia.
A neighbour took pity on the girl and took her to a shelter for abandoned women in Kabul. Ruqia wants to get a divorce from her husband, but he has stoutly refused her plea.
Civil society activists reiterate it is not a crime for adult children, whether female or male, to leave home.
There are risks, and with the widespread use of mobile phone, girls who could even be below the legal age of marriage are “propositioned over the phone, and many accept without realising the man is not honourable”, says Fatema Ahmadi, a women’s activist in the province. The girls may leave home and become victims of sexual exploitation. There is no protection for them, and they could be arrested by the police, and charged with “fornication”, which is a crime, says
Zakia Rezayee, head of women affairs in Daikundi province.
AIHRC officials in Daikundi believe there are many factors behind women’s decisions to leave home, and these are mostly related to social and cultural discrimination. Halima Bashardost, head of the section monitoring women’s rights in AIHRC, thinks that half the cases are of girls eloping to get married. “Only in 20 percent of the cases do marriages actually take place and the women have set up their own homes,” she says.
Daikundi leads the country in the number of girls reported to have run away from home. Eloping is not a crime under Afghan law, but prohibited by social custom.
Zakia Rezayee thinks there are fewer girls agreeing to marry according to their family’s wishes. There was a 15 percent increase in cases of eloping in the last solar year over the previous year.
Sima Rustamian, member of the Daikundi provincial council, however, thinks there has been a decrease because of a successful campaign to raise awareness among family elders about the rights of their daughters and sons to select their spouse.