The United Nations says there has been some progress in the treatment of women in Afghanistan.
    
In 2009, the country enacted a law to prosecute violence against women. Since then, there has been some success in punishing violators.

But the U.N. said more work needs to be done.    

"We are calling on the Afghan authorities to take, of course, much greater steps to both facilitate reporting of incidents of violence against women and actually open investigations and take on prosecutions," Georgette Gagnon, human rights director for U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said.

The 2009 law criminalizes child and forced marriages, the selling and buying women, as well as rape and more than a dozen other violent acts.