While life with disabilities is challenging for anyone in war-torn Afghanistan, disabled women and girls face discrimination and harassment when trying to access basic facilities like health care, education, or government assistance, according to an international rights group.
Human Rights Watch has detailed the everyday lives of Afghan women with disabilities in a 31-page report, titled, “Disability Is Not Weakness’: Discrimination and Barriers Facing Women and Girls with Disabilities in Afghanistan.”
Four decades of war has destroyed many institutions, weakened the government’s influence and left the country with one of the largest per capita populations of disabled people. The poor, landlocked country is also heavily dependent on foreign aid for its survival. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, its 2017 revenue was $2.3 billion while expenditures the same year were $5.3 billion.
“All Afghans with disabilities face stigma and discrimination in getting government services, but women and girls are the ‘invisible’ victims of this abuse,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at HRW and author of the report.
Obstacles in the society
In addition to dealing with the entrenched discrimination against disabled people in society, obstacles faced by both men and women that make access to education, employment, and health care difficult, women often face sexual harassment including by government officials.
“[T]he ministry employee told me that I can get this certificate (for assistance) only if I agree to be his girlfriend,” a woman in Kabul told HRW. In conservative Afghan society, few women report such incidents for fear of being stigmatized.
There was no comment from the Afghan government on the report.
According to the report, 80 percent of girls with disabilities are kept out of school either because the facilities are not equipped to accommodate them, or because of a lack of disability-friendly transport options.
Getting health care is similarly difficult, especially for those living outside of bigger cities.
“For Afghan women with disabilities who live in rural areas far from medical clinics, the absence of transportation, lack of paved roads, and long distances to clinics can create insurmountable barriers to obtaining health care,” the report said.
Women who became disabled due to the ongoing conflict in the country report reduced prospects of getting married. Disabled women are considered a “liability” because of the common perception that they would require someone to take care of them.
Finding resources to help those women is difficult in a country that faces donor fatigue coupled with a weak governance and rampant corruption, the researchers say.
