Kabul prisoners celebrate International Women's Day

Sitting in a tiny renovated room, Shahgul, a 55-year-old housewife, received a bunch of flowers as her first-ever gift to mark International Women's Day. But this is inside a cell at Kabul's Wolayat prison. "I have not heard of a women's day before nor have I ever had such a gift," the mother-of-eight, convicted of murder, told IRIN after a joint UN-government delegation visited the prison's female detention centre on Monday, International Women's Day. Shahgul, who was brought in four months ago, said she had heard on the radio that a new constitution had granted men and women equal rights. She stressed that many of her fellow women in the prison were innocent in the eyes of the new law, which is yet to be implemented. "You see all these young women? They are victims of ignorance, illiteracy, forced marriages and discriminatory traditions against women which cause them to commit crime as a final alternative," she said pointing to a young lady who she said had fled home because she did not like her fiancé. "I hope this new law will help us to be released from this hell," she sighed. As a symbolic move towards ensuring women's rights, and with the message "you are not alone", officials from the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs, together with staff from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) celebrated International Women's Day with 41 female inmates in Wolayat prison by giving them gifts and flowers. According to the officials, this was a first in the 90-year-old prison's history. Najiba Sharif Afghan, the deputy minister of women's affairs, who led the visitors, told IRIN that despite progress in Afghan women's lives, many female prisoners were victims of what she called "negative traditions and illiteracy". "I talked to them. They have not committed major crimes. Instead they are victims of discriminatory practices and violence against women," the deputy minister and famous Kabul TV presenter said, expressing the hope that with increased public awareness and the practice of the new Afghan constitution this tragedy may abate. "They are here due to forced marriages, or they have been exchanged to calm down an internal feud, or due to illiteracy and domestic violence," Sharif explained. While certain problems still remain as serious concerns for many women inside and outside prison, officials at the Kabul Wolayat detention centre say there have been improvements both in the legal and physical situation of the detention centre this year. According to Major Rona Sayed, the jailer of the women's detention centre, the improvements in the state of the cells and other developments in terms of providing legal support for prisoners were major changes. She told IRIN that, with the support of some NGOs, income-generation opportunities had been created in the prison while six defence lawyers had also assigned by an international organisation to help women with their cases. "But still we need an ambulance, we need more medicine and doctors, particularly a female gynaecologist, as we have pregnant inmates here," she said, adding that with the increasing number of inmates in the last couple of weeks, they were also facing a shortage of space. "We had more than 10 new inmates in the course of a week," she noted. The UNODC, which is the lead agency in implementing reform within the justice and penal systems, told IRIN that it was in the process of launching a new social rehabilitation programme for women, which included educational and vocational training, in order to give the inmates the chance to be reintegrated into society once they are released.