An unpublished UN report on female police officers in Afghanistan found accounts of pervasive sexual assault and harassment by their male colleagues, according to Afghan and Western officials familiar with the report that was published in top US newspaper “The New York Times”.
The report, which the United Nations has circulated only among senior, Afghan officials at the Interior Ministry, found that nearly 90 percent of the policewomen interviewed described sexual harassment and sexual violence as a serious problem, and that about 70 percent of the policewomen said that they had personally experienced sexual harassment or sexual violence themselves, according to people who saw the report or had it described to them.
A much smaller fraction reported either being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, the overall impression was of a police force in which women were always at risk.
Although the report has not been made public and was also not made available to The New York Times, two other recent reports touched on similar problems, though they did not focus as closely on the issues of sexual assault and molestation.
Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, who stepped down as Interior Minister in August, described the United Nations report’s broad outlines, but questioned on the findings of the report.
He stated that after studying the report he sent a team to investigate the position of the female police officers and that none of the women spoke to complained of such mistreatment.
“If an Afghan policewoman is being raped or sexually harassed, they would report that – they wouldn’t keep it secret,” he said.
The chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Seddiq Seddiqi, said he thought the report had “some exaggeration of the issues and the problems.” Both men insisted, however, that the ministry was committed to improving the situation of the policewomen. The report, according to two people familiar with it, surveyed nearly 10 percent of the female police force.
“We are working with the ministry on follow-up to the report and to put in place improvements,” said Georgette Gagnon, the U.N. director of human rights for Afghanistan. Few subjects are as taboo in Afghanistan as sexual behavior, and the victims of sexual attacks are often accused of immorality, shunned and sometimes jailed.
Women’s rights advocates said that because Afghan policewomen were afraid of being penalized for revealing the problem, it was extremely difficult to get them to discuss about abuse. That is all the more true if the person committing the sexual abuse is their commander or one of his close friends on the police force. The women interviewed by The New York Times said they feared being fired or demoted, or being sent to work in a job that was far away from their home if they complained.
that is sad story/
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