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The act of establishment of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission took place in 2001. AIHRC is a national institution whose main aim is both protecting and promoting human rights as well as investigating human rights abuses. Nevertheless, in this same country, which promises equal rights for men and women, struggling to survive on very little money, Afghan fathers tend to convert their underage daughters into brides in order to ward off poverty and famine. Unable to afford basic food stuffs such as Nan-i-Afghani, the national bread of Afghanistan which is very close to pita bread, people feel compelled to continue the practice of illegal early marriages and treat them as an efficient method to deliver their families from hunger. As a result, everyday thousands of female citizens fall prey to rights violations, such as forced marriages when even 13 year old girls are compelled to marry much older men. This happened, for eaxample, in the case of Khadiya and Basgol, the two Afghan girls who dared to escape and were forcibly returned to their homes. Undoubtedly, the treatment they received was anything but fair so on no account should authorities have sent them back due to the fact they had a legitimate reason to escape. And secondly, because forcing them to return would result in brutal punishment (deprivation of rights). According to the Afghan Constitution the marriage of girls under the age of 16 is not allowed. Therefore, it seems absolutely clear that having been forced to get married , child brides had every good reason to escape their husbands. Young and immature as they were, 13 year old Khadija and 14 year old Basgol had law on their side while escaping, since the marriages they were forced into should have automatically counted as invalid ones. Consequently, having their basic rights violated , the child brides should not have been treated as law-breakers and sued. What the girls deserved was justice and the right to make free choices, such as where to live. Unfortunately, instead of receiving fair treatment they both fell prey to human rights abuses stemming from the Afghan authorities’ failure to do anything to ameliorate the situation. Yet, on the other hand, one may argue that according to the local community, they grew up in, the girls’ attempted escape was a gross violation of the cultural norms. This viewpoint, however, is somewhat misguided. Bearing in mind that there are some universal rights which ought to be respected, people should not be judged only on the basis of the cultural norms. Thus, having been deprived of their fundamental rights, the two girls were fully justified to escape. Secondly, the act of returning the two runaway childbrides seems highly inadmissable because of the unfair punishment they were bound to receive from the local authorities. Even having a legitimate reason to leave their husbands, after being cought the girls were remended in custody and then sentenced to 40 lashes each and flogged. Their punishment constituted a flagrant violation of human rights. It was also an example of sickening cruelty that innocent child brides are usually exposed to if any of them ever attempt to escape. However, more appalling seems the fact that, fully aware of serious consequences which the girls were to suffer, the official did nothing to protect them. Nonetheless, as Franz Boas once suggested, it is cultural relativism that should be also taken into consideration because "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes" and hence judging through one’s own cultural lenses is very likely to be biased. Yet, the fact reamins that, there are still some inhuman categories of behaviour such as sickening cruelty which cannot be justified since everyone deserves both fair treatment and fair trial, regardless of his/her nationality. Therefore, being aware of how harshly and unjustly runaway childbrides tend to be punished, the authorities should have taken action to assist them. Rather than a willing union between a man and woman, early marriage is frequently a kind of transaction among some Afghan families. Suffering from poverty and hunger, people decide to break the law and betroth their teenage daughters to much older males, encouraged by the fact that the younger the bride, the higher the price she may fetch. As a result, fully aware of this silent approval of forced underage marriages, rarely do child brides dare to escape the tyrannical rule of their husbands, as 13 year old Khadiya and Basgol attempted to do. Accordingly, bearing in mind that the reasnon the girls had was legitimate and the received punishment brutal, the act of their forced return proved to be nothing but a flagrant injustice.
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