The government of Afghanistan [2]
should take immediate action to ensure that the country’s female police
officers have access to separate, safe, and lockable restroom
facilities in police stations, Human Rights Watch said today. Kabul’s
police chief issued an order on April 10, 2013, for the province’s
police stations to provide separate toilets and change rooms for women,
but similar orders have been ignored in the past, leaving all but a few
of Afghanistan’s 1,500 women officers without suitable and safe
facilities.
Workplace sexual harassment is a serious problem in the public and
private sectors in Afghanistan and female police officers are frequently
the targets of harassment and assault. In recent years there have been
numerous media reports of rape of female police officers by male
colleagues. The lack of safe and separate toilets makes women
particularly vulnerable.
“The Afghan government’s failure to provide female police officers
with safe, secure facilities makes them more vulnerable to abuse,” said Brad Adams [3],
Asia director. “This is not just about toilets. It’s about the
government’s recognition that women have a crucial role to play in law
enforcement in Afghanistan.”
Already the number of female police in the ranks of Afghanistan’s
security forces is small, slightly more than 1 percent of police
officers in the country. The Interior Ministry, which oversees the
Afghan police force, has set a goal of 5,000 women by the end of 2014,
but has acknowledged that it is unlikely to meet this objective.
Addressing the concerns of police women is necessary to address the
rampant violence against women in wider Afghan society. Employing
greater numbers of female police officers will improve access for women
seeking to report violence and pursue justice, given the cultural
sensitivity and stigma around reporting sexual and other violence
against women. In 2009, the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against
Women created new penalties for violence against women, but the law has
not been adequately enforced, in part because of the lack of female
police officers to assist female crime victims, including other police
officers.
“Harassment and abuse is an everyday experience for many Afghan
women,” Adams said. “Without the consistent presence of female police
officers across the country, legal protections for women will remain an
unfulfilled promise.”
The lack of safe changing rooms and toilets can endanger the safety
of female police officers. Many female police officers cannot travel to
work in their police uniforms due to security threats posed by Taliban
insurgents or others opposed to women police. As the number of women in
the police force has risen, so have the allegations by female officers
of having been raped, assaulted or sexually harassed by male colleagues.
There appear to have been no successful prosecutions of these cases.
This may reflect unwillingness by the Ministry of Interior to take these
cases seriously, a lack of confidentiality and victim protection, and
pressure on women to withdraw their accusations.
Providing proper facilities is critical to preventing workplace
sexual harassment of female police officers and creating a
non-discriminatory work atmosphere that respects their privacy and
dignity. However, three orders since 2012 to install facilities in
police stations have not been implemented despite the promise of
government funds to pay for them.
An international advisor working closely with female Afghan police
officers told Human Rights Watch that when sexual assaults of police
women happen, they often occur in isolated locations such as unsafe
toilets and changing areas: “Those facilities that women do have access
to often have peepholes or doors which don’t lock. Women have to go [to
the toilets] in pairs. Toilets are a site of harassment.”
No more than a handful of Afghanistan’s police stations have safe and
accessible toilets, said experts working with female police officers.
Female officers are forced to use toilets shared with men, which they
find unsafe and stigmatizing in a culture where strict segregation of
the sexes is the norm. Police stations in rural areas of Afghanistan
sometimes have no toilets at all, and both women and men are forced to
seek secluded locations outside.
The budget for Afghanistan’s police force is primarily provided
through the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), which is
funded by international donor countries and administered by the United
Nations. The 2013 LOTFA work plan includes provisions to establish
separate toilet and changing room facilities for female police across
the country. The plan is awaiting approval by Interior Minister Mujtaba
Patang, and will require a significant allocation of resources from the
trust fund.
“The drawdown of international forces from Afghanistan poses risks
for the rights of women in the country,” Adams said. “Having effective
Afghan police forces to protect their security will require sufficient
female police officers as an urgent priority.”
Background: Unsafe work environments limit ability of Afghan police to protect women
Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women were largely kept out of the
work place, including the police forces. In the years since the Taliban
fell in late 2001, the Afghan government and international donors have
worked together to strengthen Afghan security forces. While there has
been some effort to recruit female police officers, the progress has
been far from adequate.
Female police officers, while crucial to effective law enforcement in
any country, have particularly important roles in Afghanistan, where
segregation of the sexes is extreme and security threats are acute. A
key task for female officers is body-searching women at check points and
entrances to government facilities. Given cultural sensitivities, these
searches cannot be conducted by men, and there have been repeated
incidents of male suicide bombers exploiting this limitation by
disguising themselves under the concealing burqas worn by Afghan women.
Female officers also have a crucial role to play in house searches,
where they are required for searching female areas of houses and
interviewing female occupants.
The need for female police officers, however, goes far beyond their
crucial role in counter-insurgency efforts. Violence against women is
endemic in Afghanistan. Crimes of violence against women are rarely
reported to the police and even more rarely lead to investigations,
prosecutions, and convictions.
The Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women
In 2009, under intense pressure from Afghan women’s rights activists,
key Afghan parliamentarians, and the international community, President
Hamid Karzai took an important step by signing the Law on Elimination
of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law). This law created an essential new
tool for police and prosecutors, by criminalizing a range of different
acts, including forced marriage, underage marriage, sale of women and
girls, rape, and domestic violence.
Four years later, however, the impact of the EVAW Law has been
disappointing. Prosecutions under the law have occurred, aided in some
provinces by the creation of internationally funded specialized EVAW
prosecution units within the Attorney General’s Office. But the number
of prosecutions has been small, the number of convictions far smaller,
and in many provinces the law has yet to be invoked. Abusive practices,
such as the jailing of women or girls who flee domestic violence or
forced marriage on accusations of “immorality,” continue unchecked.
Violence against women continues to be an epidemic; Afghanistan’s
national human rights commission recorded a 30 percent increase in
reported cases of violence against women last year over the previous
year.
Female police officers are an absolutely crucial ingredient in the
effort to enforce the EVAW law. In Afghanistan’s deeply
gender-segregated society, many women, especially those from the most
disadvantaged parts of society, refrain from reporting violence because
they are hesitant to speak to male police officers. Women might even
risk violent or abusive consequences from their family should they speak
to a man who is unrelated to them or discuss violence with anyone
outside the family. Because of these cultural sensitivities, the
presence of female police officers is a crucial ingredient in the
enforcement of the EVAW Law.
Failure to Recruit Female Police Officers
The Afghan government, with the support of international advisors and
donors, has tried to address this problem through the creation of
specialized units in police stations called Family Response Units
(FRUs). FRUs are designed to provide a separate space staffed by female
police officers within police stations where women from the community
can come to seek help, but their effectiveness has been seriously
hampered by the lack of female police officers available to staff them.
As a result, many FRUs are staffed primarily or entirely by male
officers, effectively defeating their purpose.
Recruitment of female police officers has not been a high enough
priority for the Afghan government or donors. The number of female
officers has increased, from 180 in 2005 (at that time 0.3 percent of
the police force), to 1,195 in September 2011 (1 percent of the police
force at that time), to 1,500 today, but that number still remains only 1
percent of the police force, which has grown to about 150,000 officers
nationwide. The small number of female police are not evenly distributed
across the country, but are concentrated in urban areas (315 in Kabul
alone), meaning that women in rural areas are especially unlikely to
encounter female officers.
The Ministry of Interior, to which the police belong, has set a goal
of increasing the number of female police officers to 5,000 by the end
of 2014. In spite of this goal, however, the ministry has not taken
steps to improve the recruitment and retention of female police
officers. In an interview in late 2012, a senior police administrator
told Human Rights Watch that the solution to the problem needed to come
from the community. “Families don’t want to send their daughters to the
police,” he said. “Civil society organizations and religious leaders
need to go to the communities and tell families that they should send
their girls. Until then we can do nothing.”
He acknowledged that the lack of safe toilets and changing facilities
might be barriers to women joining the police force, but knew of no
plans by the ministry to address the problem.
Need for Monitoring and Accountability
The lack of safe toilets and changing rooms directly endangers the
safety of female police officers. As the number of women in the police
force has risen there have been numerous incidents in which female
officers have alleged that they have been raped, assaulted or sexually
harassed by male colleagues, although there is no public record of any
successful prosecutions of these cases. An international advisor working
closely with female Afghan police officers told Human Rights Watch that
when sexual assaults of police women happen, they often occur in
isolated locations such as unsafe toilets and changing areas.
The Afghan authorities should take various measures to prevent and
punish workplace sexual harassment of female police officers. Even
though the government has issued orders to police stations saying they
should create separate toilets, Human Rights Watch found that there
needs to be further practical guidance to ensure that separate toilet
facilities do not replicate the problems that exist now. For example, to
be safe, toilets and changing rooms should be designed with the
security of female officers as a key consideration. Toilets and changing
rooms should be built of materials that prevent men from creating
peepholes or breaking in easily. The facilities should be located in
areas that are not isolated from the police station, so that women can
walk to and from them safely, including at night. Locks should be
installed that allow women using the facilities to lock them from the
inside when in use. Facilities should not be locked from the outside
unless a functional system is in place to ensure that female officers
and female visitors to the police station can easily access the key at
any time.
The authorities should install a system of monitoring to prevent male
officers from using toilets and changing rooms provided for women.
These measures should include tasking a separate body with supervising
the progress on preventive measures as well as progress on responding
appropriately to complaints of sexual harassment. Toilet and changing
room facilities should be inspected on regular basis to ensure that they
remain reserved solely for use by women. A recently established
steering committee on the needs of female police headed by Deputy
Interior Minister Mirza Mohammad Yarmand could be the body best suited
to oversee these matters.
Government Initiatives to Improve Safety and Accessibility of Toilets for Women
In addition to the establishment of a steering committee on the needs
of female police, there are other small signs of progress in addressing
these problems. On July 24, 2012, following a consultation with
representatives of female police officers at Interior Ministry
headquarters, Deputy Minister Ghulam Ali Wahdat issued an order to
police managers: “As is observed, a considerable number of our sisters
who serve as officers, junior officers or civilian administrators in
units [under your supervision] face serious difficulties from a lack of
toilets and changing rooms.” The order then directed police managers to
“as quickly as possible” set aside toilets and changing rooms for female
police officers. In February 2013, the ministry’s facilities department
issued two reminders to managers, clarifying further that each facility
should set aside, from existing facilities, a changing room and a
toilet for use by women only.
On April 10, 2013, Kabul Police Chief Lieutenant General Mohammad
Ayoub Salangi issued an order instructing that all police stations under
his command in Kabul province that employ women must immediately
provide a separate and private changing room and toilet for women
officers. The order stated that where additional resources were required
to establish these facilities, police officials may request assistance
from Salangi’s office.
The steering committee headed by Deputy Minister Yarmand should
oversee creation and use of these facilities. The committee should also
identify and implement other measures to promote the well-being of women
police officers, including ensuring prosecution in any case in which a
female officer has been assaulted or harassed by a male police officer. (HRW)
More Readings;
01. NPR>>>
02. NPR>>>
03. JEZEBEL>>>
More Readings;
01. NPR>>>
02. NPR>>>
03. JEZEBEL>>>
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