Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rightsRehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands
The Guardian: Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. 'It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her,' the US charity Human Rights Watch said...
Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient.'...
Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which is says contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution. The group said that Karzai had 'made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election.'
