WUNRN
Statement of Iranian Women’s Movement in
Support of Women in Afghanistan Against their New Family Law
14 April 2009
Feministschool: Some groups of Women’s movement in Iran issued the statement in Support of Women in Afghanistan Against their New Family Law:
Our Afghani Sisters
We, the Iranian women’s movement activists have been trying regularly and responsibly to follow activities ,achievements and failures of women in the area. Because we believe that each achievement or failure which is faced by women specially in our region can have reciprocal effects on Iranian women and our society at large. We have experienced that we are able to amend our moves in order to gain equal rights by learning from each other. Hence when we were informed that a new law called "Family Law" was approved in Afghanistan we decided to unite in your cause and struggle against the anti woman law.
In this law, women specially Afghan Shi’ite women will be limited severely this law comprises 20% of Afghanistan’s citizens and increases men’s power in the family and reduces women’s human rights intensely. Article 133 of this law allows men to decide on their wives employment and in another bill women are not allowed to leave home without their husbands permission unless when there is an emergency. The legal age of marriage for Shiite girls decreases from 18 to 16 in this law" marriage rape", which is in contrast to human rights and The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), was announced as legal and causes suppression against afghan’s women.
President Karzay stated that this law has been misunderstood! Our question is this what our we suppose to understand besides sexual slavery from this law? Is it not obvious that the respect and human right of women has been forgotten and the sole purpose of women has been reduced to sexually in service of men?
Unfortunately most of these discriminatory laws which is considered for Shiite Afghan’s women in the new family law, exist more or less in Iran ’s Family law . but fortunately with the equality movement in Iran the anti women laws are being challenged, if you have been following our struggle you would be aware that last year a new law "Family protection Bill" was proposed and was challenged and condemned by all, even though we managed to throw the Bill from the parliament but this does not mean we have nullified all the anti women Bill’s in our country.
We have to be vigilant that such laws have negative effects in the society it also increases violence against Shiite women, this will soon spread to Sunni women and other religious will follow suit. We congratulate you the Shiite and Sunni women are united struggling to defeat the anti women law. No doubt your courage’s and united struggle has given us the courage to stand up and support your struggle.
We welcome president Karzay’s statement on reviewing this law and we hope the reform of this law will benefit all women regardless of religion or ethnic minority and will contain resolutions for equality, anti violence, justice and humanity.
The statement has been issued by the following groups :
Women’s Commission of Tahkim Vahdat(Strethening Unity )
Women’s Committee of Tahkim Vahdat Iranian Researchers’ Association
Committee of Human Rights Reporters
Health Activists Association (Talashgaran Salamat)
Farasoo Association (Tabriz)
—
Above Statement in Persian
Take Action
Sign the petition of one million signatures to end discriminatory laws against women.
Sign
petition (for
support of Campaign for One Million Signatures)
sign
the petition (for
release of women’s rights activists)
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to: wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com.
Thank you.