Senate Foreign Relations Committee Passes Boxer-Snowe Resolution Calling for Revision of Afghan Marital Rape Law

Washington, D.C. – Just hours before Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to Capitol Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today passed a resolution authored by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) calling on Afghanistan’s leaders to revise a law that would legalize marital rape and impose other Taliban-era restrictions on Shiite women in Afghanistan.

The resolution urges the Government of Afghanistan to revise the law, including its provisions on marital rape and women’s freedom of movement, to ensure its consistency with internationally recognized rights of women.

Senator Boxer said, “This law is abhorrent and it should never have been signed by President Karzai. The women of Afghanistan deserve leaders who will speak out for them and unequivocally reject attacks on their rights and freedoms. These women deserve nothing less than their full rights enshrined in international law.”

“Afghanistan’s full potential as a nation will be fully realized when the women of Afghanistan are freed from their ‘sentence of silence’,” said Senator Snowe. “This resolution sends a strong message to the women of Afghanistan that the United States is committed to paving the way for a new generation of Afghani women, actively participating and contributing to the all aspects of rebuilding their society.”

Under the law passed by the Afghan Parliament and signed by President Karzai last month, a Shiite woman would only be allowed to leave home for a “legitimate purpose” as defined by her husband. The law also says, “Unless the wife is ill, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of the husband,” a provision that the United Nations and many human rights groups say legalizes marital rape.

The resolution is cosponsored by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Patty Murray (D-WA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

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