Xinhua, March 29, 2011


Afghan women suffering from domestic violence: official

"A total of 88 cases of women self-immolation have been registered with Herat Burning Hospital over the past one year"

Ignoring women rights and violence against women in Afghanistan's western Herat and neighboring provinces has prompted 88 women and girls to commit self-immolation in an attempt to get rid of domestic violence over the past one year.

"A total of 88 cases of women self-immolation have been registered with Herat Burning Hospital over the past one year," the head of the hospital, doctor Mohammad Arif Jalali told Xinhua.

He (Dr. Arif Jalali, a specialist at the Herat Burns & Plastic Surgery Hospital) said that in 2010, the hospital received about 90 women who had self-immolated and 51 of them died, while in 2009 there were only 85 women who set themselves on fire but a greater number, 59, died. Most of those who self-immolate are between the ages of 15 and 25.
PAN, Mar. 30, 2011

He also added the number of women commiting self-immolation in the previous year was 85.

Out of the 88 ill-fated women who committed self-immolation in last year, 50 of them succumbed to their burns, Jalali said.

In the war-torn Afghanistan where people, mostly in rural areas practice upon tradition the women and girls are facing a variety of violence, including under-aged marriage, forced marriage, education deprivation and beating by in-laws.

Although there is no official statistics about the violence committed against women in Afghanistan, a report released by the Human Rights Department of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in December 2010 described the violence against women as widespread.

Though the social status of women in the post-Taliban Afghanistan has improved and in today's Afghanistan, women serve as cabinet ministers, members of parliament, teachers, artists and traders, according to the UN report, child marriages, forced marriages and honor killings are still rampant.

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