Self-Immolation by Afghan Women Rising

An Afghan begger woman clad in burka waits for pedisturian to ask for money in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, March. 12, 2007. Despite significant progress in women's rights since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape. Desperate to escape widespread domestic violence, forced marriage and other hardships, scores of women across Afghanistan each year commit suicide by fire. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq) (Musadeq Sadeq - AP)

Despite advances in women's rights since the fall in 2001 of the Taliban regime that barred education and employment for females, UNIFEM estimates that at least one out of three Afghan women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused. The abuser is usually a family member or someone she knows. Rarely is anyone prosecuted or even reprimanded.

Hussein Hasrat, a researcher who worked on the commission's report, said the data suggested a jump in the number of women committing suicide by fire. However, he acknowledged it was possible that the recorded increase was a result of better data.

Reliable nationwide statistics are not available. Many families cover up what happened because of shame, while a lack of medical care and government services mean many such cases are never officially recorded.

Wafiq said that Medica Mondiale has definitely seen more self-immolation cases. Often, she said, women mimic what they learn from news reports, which fail to point out that those who survive are scarred and deformed.

Fourteen pages of the commission's report are dedicated to brief descriptions by family members of reasons these women committed suicide. Most are because of rape, beatings and accusations against their honor. None of the dead women or their relatives are named in the report.

The mother of a victim in Badghis is quoted saying that her daughter committed self-immolation because her fiance accused her of getting pregnant by another man and would not accept the child as his own.

The mother of another victim said that her daughter was actually a victim of domestic violence although it was portrayed by others as a suicide.

"They beat my daughter a lot, then they poured fuel on her and said that she committed self-immolation," the mother says. She did not give details of the attackers.

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Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.