Afghanistan

According to the United Nations, the court system in Afghanistan is failing women who are victims of violence, leading them to turn to mediation instead, the Los Angeles Times' Ali M. Latifi reports. Women interviewed by UN investigators reported they have to pay bribes to move the judicial process along, that they don't know how the law applies to their cases, and they fear imprisoning the men who are often the sole breadwinners for their households. Orzala Ashraf Nemat, a women’s rights activist, told the L.A. Times that mediation can be a long-term solution to domestic violence, but, on the other hand, "'in the past, we have had judges telling victims of gang rapes to marry their rapists. Clearly, there has to be a certain level of corruption in the formal systems for people to prefer mediation.'”

Foreign Policy's Phelim Kine reports on the many, many threats that Afghanistan journalists face: The Taliban said last year that it would specifically target journalists and NGOs as part of its insurgency, and there were eight journalists killed in 2014. A Human Rights Watch report documented how media outlets are increasingly subject to harassment, threats and violence from security forces and pro-government warlords. And the official Media Violations Investigation Commission, rather than examining if complaints about the accuracy of reporting have merit, directly forward complaints to the Attorney General's office to intiate legal action against journalists. The result? Afghani journalists self-censor in order to protect themselves (this reminds me of how some Mexican news outlets stopped reporting on drug trafficking because of the murders and kidnappings they faced from drug cartels): "A Kabul-based senior newspaper editor told Human Rights Watch that reporting on certain politically connected mujahidin warlords — veterans of the conflicts against both the Soviet occupation and the Taliban — were effectively off limits for his reporters," Kine reports.