{"id":6606,"date":"2016-03-04T11:22:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T09:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=6606"},"modified":"2016-03-04T11:31:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T09:31:40","slug":"sexual-assault-in-the-name-of-science-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2016\/03\/sexual-assault-in-the-name-of-science-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexual Assault in the Name of Science in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"
HRW<\/a><\/h5>\n
Heather Barr<\/a>\/\u00a0Senior Researcher, Women’s Rights Division<\/span><\/h5>\n

Each year, dozens or even hundreds of women and girls in Afghanistan are subjected to invasive, humiliating, and sometimes painful vaginal and rectal exams in the name of \u201cscience.\u201d These so-called virginity exams are not just demeaning \u2013 they constitute sexual assault and are often used as evidence against women in court for the \u201ccrime\u201d<\/a> of zina, <\/em>or sex outside of marriage.<\/p>\n

\"virginity<\/a><\/p>\n

The governmental Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recently\u00a0interviewed<\/a> 53 women and girls as young as 13 who had been accused of zina<\/em>, an act punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Forty-eight of these women and girls had been sent for \u201cvirginity exams\u201d performed by Afghan government doctors. Twenty were examined more than once \u2013 up to four times in a couple of cases. One woman said that there were six people in the room watching the examination.<\/p>\n

Doctors write reports based on these examinations, and they are used as evidence in courts hearing the \u201cmoral crime\u201d accusation against the woman or girl. These reports often draw conclusions on whether a woman or girl is a \u201cvirgin,\u201d and whether she recently or habitually engaged in sexual intercourse.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirginity exams\u201d are bogus. Many people mistakenly believe that virginity can be determined because the hymen is always broken when a woman or girl has sexual intercourse for the first time. This is simply not true. Some girls are born without a hymen; hymens often break during daily non-sexual activities, and some hymens remain intact after sexual intercourse. Purported virginity exams are so unreliable that the World Health Organization has said<\/a> that they have no scientific validity and health workers should never conduct them.<\/p>\n

The continued use of degrading and unscientific \u201cvirginity exams\u201d by the Afghan government is part of a broader pattern of abuses in which women and girls in Afghanistan are jailed on spurious \u201cmoral crimes\u201d accusations, often in situations where they are fleeing forced marriage or domestic violence. The government should end these arrests entirely and reform the law that permits them. Banning all \u201cvirginity exams\u201d could be an important first step toward reform. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani could abolish these exams through an executive order. Recognizing everyone\u2019s inherent dignity, respecting human rights, and appreciating real science over pseudo-science all demand he do so.<\/p>\n

READ AIHRC report HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HRW Heather Barr\/\u00a0Senior Researcher, Women’s Rights Division Each year, dozens or even hundreds of women and girls in Afghanistan are subjected to invasive, humiliating, and sometimes painful vaginal and rectal exams in the name of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,51,90,88,17,49],"tags":[590,245,611,102],"class_list":["post-6606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-child-rights","category-editor-selection","category-slider","category-women","category-womens-rights","tag-afghanistan","tag-childrens-rights","tag-reproductive-and-maternal-health","tag-womens-rights-2","country-afghanistan","Documents-conventions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6609,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6606\/revisions\/6609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}