Forced marriage and chronic abuse are among the key triggers for the growing cases of self-immolation among women in Afghanistan, a regional conference heard. The high rate of illiteracy -- with under 20 percent of women said to be literate -- and an incompetent justice system also meant many women cannot see their way out of problems and so take their lives, the three-day meeting heard.
The conference of about 200 people, including from other countries that have similar rates of suicide like Bangladesh, Iran, India and Sri Lanka, was called to try to find ways to stop the phenomenon.
Experts said there were no accurate overall figures, with hospitals and police not keeping proper records and many families hiding their cases because of shame with suicide against Islam.
However non-government organisation medica mondiale presented research that showed that Kabul hospitals recorded 18 cases of self-immolation in 2005 and 36 this year.
In the western city of Herat the trend was rising with cases reported on a daily basis and 60 percent of the women involved illiterate, it said.
The reasons women and girls resorted to such drastic action included forced marriage, being given to another family to settle a dispute and conflict with in-laws, with some fathers-in-law demanding sex, it said.
"It is the final decision for women who don't have any other way to solve their problems," Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) chief Sima Simar told the meeting.
A 16-year-old survivor named Gulsum told delegates she had set herself alight after being beaten by her drug-addicted husband, a man 25 years older than her whom her father had made her marry.
"When he did not have access to heroin and narcotics, he tortured me. After midnight he would hit me."
"That night he hit me and hit my head. Blood was coming from my nose. I asked him why he was doing it and he hit me even more."
In an addled state, she pour benzine on herself and lit a flame.
Now undergoing a series of operations, Gulsum has divorced the man, a rare step in patriarchal and conservative Afghanistan where divorce is taboo and custody of children mostly goes to the husband.
Between 60 and 80 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced, according to the AIHRC. And although the legal age for marriage is 18, around 57 percent of girls are married before 16, according to official statistics cited by the United Nations.
A message delivered to the meeting from President Hamid Karzai said self-immolation arose from psychological problems among women in post-conflict countries.
Deputy health minister Faizullah Kakar said biological issues such as allergens and nutritional deficiencies could also play a role in depression that may lead them to commit suicide.
But Suraya Sobhrang, also from the AIHRC, said the real causes were more to do with the poor way women were treated through cultural practises and because of inadequate state protection and impunity for perpetrators.
Women in the post-Taliban society were also becoming aware of their rights but could not find the support, through courts or legislation, to match their expectations, she said on the sidelines of the meeting.
Sobhrang estimated there was violence in about 90 percent of Afghan families which could partly be blamed on the nearly three decades of war the country had gone through.
"It is clear continuing war in Afghanistan was very much damaging to the social values but it is also clear that it isn't all to blame," she said, listing poverty, tradition and illiteracy as other factors.
