Women for Afghan Women is appalled and outraged at the new law that President Karzai has approved, a law that legalizes rape within marriage and child marriage and makes it illegal for women to leave the home without a male relative’s permission.

The law gives Afghan men the right to have sex with their wives at least “once every four nights,” unless ill, and does not give women the right to refuse. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

With America poised to "negotiate" with the very structures that are fundamentally opposed to the rights, health and well-being, safety and agency of women, our work to empower and protect Afghan women is more dangerous and more critical than ever.. We do not believe the US should be negotiating with the Taliban, thus driving us into the darkness that cast a shadow over the Swat Valley. President Karzai’s approval of this horrific law, presumably to improve his chances of being re-elected, demonstrates that there is very little difference between those in power now and the Taliban.

Women for Afghan Women runs three women’s centers and shelters, in Kabul, Mazar and Kapisa. We know first hand the desperate situation of women who are raped, abused and tortured in their homes and in their communities. We have girls as young as 6 staying in our shelter, rebuilding their shattered selves after brutal gang-rape, after having been sold to men or given away, handed over, to another family as restitution for a crime. Our advocacy for women's rights is rooted in intimate knowledge of the hardships suffered by women and girls in Afghanistan.


Afghanistan’s leaders must create laws and cultural sensibilities that protect and respect women and girls instead of laws that further inhibit their human right to freedom of self-definition.

We are told that speaking out against this law is tantamount to disrespecting Afghan culture. Our experience has been that the majority of Afghan people do not believe in laws like these, that they want peace, that they are in favor of women’s rights, and that the Afghan government has been hijacked by warlords and power-mongers who support their march to power by trampling on the bodies of women. Women for Afghan Women does not respect any culture, group or individual that places one group of people at the mercy of another or gives one group absolute power over another. We invite the entire world to unite in condemnation of this and every law and practice that undermines fundamental human rights.