KABUL (AFP) — The US global women's ambassador said Friday impunity for attacks against women and girls in Afghanistan was intolerable and the government needed to provide them with better legal protection.
Melanne Verveer, ambassador-at-large for women's issues, told reporters that she had delivered this message to President Hamid Karzai and other officials during a three-day visit.
"These violations against human rights are intolerable," Verveer said.
She cited among her examples an acid attack on schoolgirls in the southern city of Kandahar last year and the shooting of a woman provincial councillor in the same city in April.
Both were linked to Taliban-led insurgents but women in this male-dominated country are also subject to violence from other groups, including "honour killings" by their relatives.
"There is this sense that we are not doing enough here to prevent this kind of violence," Verveer said.
"It is frankly one of the reasons I have come because we have got to send a message loud and clear that this can't be tolerated.
"We cannot have these kind of acts of impunity, the justice system has to work to prosecute them, we've got to ensure greater security and the rights of women need to be protected."
Verveer said there had been progress for women's equality since the fall of the Taliban regime but there was "much that still needs to done".
Under the Taliban and the preceding civil war governments, women could not work or study out of the home and were beaten by "virtue" police if they did not completely cover themselves, including their faces, while in public.
Some Afghan girls were today in school and access to health care had improved, the ambassador said.
But the role of women in politics "needs to be taken seriously", she said, also emphasising their need for economic development through access to work.
Verveer announced a 26.3-million-dollar programme to provide grants to Afghan women.
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