UN mission calls on Afghan gov't to protect women rights

The UN mission in Afghanistan on Wednesday called on Afghan government to protect the women rights and improve the implementation of law for "Elimination of Violence against Women" in the country. "Judicial and law enforcement officials are so far implementing sporadically the two-year-old law Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) supporting the equality and rights of Afghan women, and the Government has not yet succeeded in implementing the law to the vast majority of cases of violence against women," the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a report released here on Wednesday. The justice sector in some Afghan provinces has applied the EVAW law which is encouraging. But the low number of cases prosecuted and tried shows that a much more active collective effort by justice system actors, government decision-makers and others is needed to urge judicial and local authorities to apply the law to all cases of violence against women, said Staffan de Mistura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA. "Progress on the status of Afghan women over the last ten years, including their 38 percent access to schools, their 69 MPs in Parliament and some women who have qualified as airplane pilots,is undermined by uneven implementation of the Elimination of Violence against Women Law," De Mistura said in the report.