LibriumArcana.Games

A new law to give the minority Shia community an identity is stripping women's rights. CNN's Atia Abawi reports.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been urged by the UN and Western aid agencies to abolish a new law that they say legalises rape within marriage.

They say that the law - signed by the president last month - limits the rights of women from the Shia minority.

A UN spokeswoman in Kabul told the BBC that it was seriously concerned about the potential impact of the law.

Aides to President Karzai insist that the new law has been introduced to provide more protection for Shia women.

'Disastrous'

But human rights activists say that the new law reverses many of the freedoms won by Afghan women in the seven years since the Taleban were driven from power.

Women in Afghanistan
The law has been described as 'oppressive' for women

They say it removes the right of women to refuse their husbands sex, unless they are ill.

Women will also need to get permission from their husbands if they want to leave their homes, unless there is an emergency.

Soraya Sobhrang from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission campaigned against the law. She has criticised long-standing Western silence over the issue which she said had been "disastrous for women's rights in Afghanistan".

"This law legalises all violence which happens against women in Afghanistan," she told the BBC. "They will lose their rights we have in our constitution."

The law covers members of Afghanistan's Shia minority, who make up 10% of the population.

It was rushed through parliament in February and has now been approved by President Hamid Karzai.

But the BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says that the final version has not yet been made public, and the president has not yet commented on it.

The law was backed by influential Shia clerics, and Shia political parties.

Defenders of the law say it is an improvement on the customary laws which normally decide family matters.

But critics like Member of Parliament Fawzia Koofi have accused the president of playing for votes.

"We have elections coming up in the summer and President Karzai's dependency on these fundamentalist groups is growing - and also he wants to have the support of the extremist Shia groups."

A separate family law for the Sunni majority is now also being drawn up. Activists fear that this too might be used to roll back Afghan women's hard-won freedoms.

A spokeswoman for the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) in Kabul told the BBC a "studied approach" is now required to determine the exact content of the new law.

"Unifem-Afghanistan remains seriously concerned about the potential impact of this law on the women of Afghanistan," the spokeswoman said.

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Amid mounting pressure from the West, Afghan President Hamid Karzai says his government will review a recently approved version of a law that critics say legalizes marital rape and the U.S. president has called "abhorrent."

"We understand the concerns of our allies in the international community," Karzai told reporters Saturday.

The minister of justice would study the draft, he said.

"If there is anything that is of concern to us then we will definitely take action in consultation with our [religious clerics] and send it back to the parliament," Karzai said. "This is something that we are also serious about and we should not allow."

Karzai's news conference was in response to a series of news reports by Western media since the president signed the law last month.

He specifically mentioned a March 31 story by London-based The Independent, which called the law "a massive blow for women's rights" and cited critics who said Karzai "rushed" the bill through parliament in hopes of appeasing Islamic fundamentalists ahead of August elections.

Human rights groups and news reports consistently refer to a report from the U.N. Development Fund for Women which reportedly stated that the legislation -- a piece of sharia law, or Islamic law -- that affects the Shiite community in the predominantly Sunni nation "legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband" by allowing men to force sexual intercourse on their spouses.

Shiites make up roughly 10 percent of Afghanistan's population.

Western leaders attending a NATO conference Saturday also signaled their disapproval of the legislation.

"I think this law is abhorrent," U.S. President Obama said in Strasbourg, France. "We think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture, but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed, with the latter saying, "We very much hope that the draft piece of legislation is to be withdrawn."

The law was drafted by Afghanistan's conservative lawmakers after spending more than a year off and on the parliament's daily agenda. Shia Muslims have been practicing their form of Islam for centuries in Afghanistan, but this law allows them to preserve their identity among the majority Sunni population, one parliamentarian said.

Among its provisions are that women must ask a male relative to leave the house.

"What my fear is, women and children of Afghanistan are always the victims of political games," Afghan lawmaker Fawzia Koofi told CNN in a recent interview. "I mean, they don't have a gun to fight, they cannot create a mess."

Koofi, and other critics of the law, hope that the supreme court will rule that the legislation is at odds with the Afghan constitution, which promises equal rights to all citizens -- male or female.

Still, despite the international outcry against the bill, many in Afghanistan remain unaware of it. Support can be found among those who do, especially the Shiite population.

"Shia people are in Afghanistan," Shia resident Mohammad Zahir said. "They are a part of Afghanistan and there needs to be a law that they go by and follow."