Daily Times

Gender-based violence in Afghanistan can take myriad, often less-than-subtle forms, particularly in the most remote regions of the country. When human rights worker Sadia Ekrami tried to speak about basic rights to a crowd of men in a village in northern Afghanistan, she was threatened with death, and forced to flee for her life. “Fortunately, I talked my way out of them killing me, but it is an example of how women in Afghanistan who speak out can end up dead,” she said.

Sadia, also a social media expert, knows a bit about the problem. She follows every form of gender-based violence in northern Afghanistan. A recent survey, which she conducted, turned up some classic tales of workplace harassment. In one case, a male colleague told a female co-worker that he had fallen in love with a movie actress “who looked just like her.” When he gave her a flash drive containing an inappropriate movie, she was not amused.

Other school girls in the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif, as in large cities anywhere in the world, report being stalked. Indeed, around 87 percent of Afghan women experience at least one form of gender-based violence in their lifetime, according to the United Nations.

Yet, Sadia sees signs of change in the air – and across the region. “Social media has opened up new possibilities for women and girls in Afghanistan,” she said. “Before we didn’t know what to do, but now women are telling their stories.”

The struggle of Afghan women, girls, and boys to overcome abuse, harassment, gender-based violence, and sexual violence has its parallels around the world, and has been addressed in new ways in 2017, particularly through the media. Societal definitions of what constitutes gender-directed violence and sexual violence are under fresh scrutiny. This year’s vibrant global conversation, inspired by new stories in the media about gender-based violence, abuse, and harassment stemming from a willingness of survivors to speak out, has given fresh impetus for change on a global scale.

Annually, the “16 days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign, ” which runs from November 25 to December 10, marks a global campaign aimed at raising public awareness and mobilizing everyone – men, women, and children – to counter all forms of violence against women, girls, and boys. The theme of this year’s 2017 campaign is “Leave no one behind,” a notion that suggests to me that we need to reach out as families, communities and institutions to confront this scourge in new ways.

As the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan, I lead an assistance mission focused on preventing conflict and making peace, and this also includes addressing the root causes of the violence that shatters the lives of women, girls, and children.

In Afghanistan, gender-based violence takes extraordinary forms, including women and girls traded in a marriage exchanges between families in a practice known as badal, giving away girls to settle disputes, known as ba’ad, and the practice of bacha bazi, where boys are used as sex slaves.

Fortunately, Afghanistan’s government in concert with the United Nations has already acknowledged that gender-based violence is endemic and needs to be eradicated through, among other means, the rule of law and proper enforcement mechanisms.

Published in Daily Times, December 5^th 2017.