Reports of violence against women in Helmand province have increased by 20% from last year, the provincial directorate of Women’s Affairs said.

The directorate said that 95 cases of violence against women have been recorded in the province over the past eight months. The cases include running away from home, murder, forced marriage and divorce.
“The only way to fight violence against women is to raise public awareness and make people aware of the legal and Islamic issues surrounding women’s rights. Some families might not be aware of women’s rights,” said the Helmand Women’s Affairs director, Wajiah Rasuli.
Gul Sika (a given name), a 25-year-old woman from Helmand, said she was forcibly married to an old man, so she ran away.
“My father forced me to marry the man. I was not informed about this. I was beaten both in my father’s house and in my husband’s; therefore, I made this decision,” she said.
Gul Sika last week visited the Helmand Directorate of Women’s Affairs to part ways with her husband.
“I want a divorce. I wanted to go to school but I was not allowed. I was asked to stay at home,” she added.
Some religious scholars in Helmand said forced marriage has no place in Islam.
“The nikah (marriage ceremony) in which a girl is not consulted is not right. These consultations are about a matching in age and the satisfaction of the two sides,” said Mohammad Wali Dost, a religious scholar.
Recently a study released by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) claimed that reported violence against women in the country has increased 8 percent this year, with 2,762 cases.
The report, which was made public at a gathering in Kabul on Saturday, compares 2,536 cases of violence against women over seven months of the last solar year—March 2018 to September 2018–with 2,762 cases from the same period this year.
According to the report, 123 of the cases allege sexual violence, and this a one percent increase from the same period last year. 485 cases are “economically-related violence,” which is a 14 percent increase from last year. 
Also, 1,400 of the cases are identified as acts of verbal or psychological abuse, which is a 37 percent increase compared with the same period in 2018.