Women's rights have seen little progress in Balkh province, where forced and child marriages are more common than most of the rest of the country.
A three day workshop about ending violence against women was held by the Equal Social Gender Project of USAID this week. Afghan female activists interested in stopping violence against women participated.
The Director of the Balkh Department of Women's Affairs Mariam Muradi said that over two hundred cases of violence against women have been registered in the current year, most of which included forced and early marriages.
"Violence against women has increased day-by-day, which has raised our and other women's rights intuitions' concerns," Muradi said.
Although marriage is considered a sacred institution in Islam, religious scholars have said forced marriage is forbidden and have said consent is necessary.
"Forced and early marriages are against Islam" a religious scholar name Mawlawi Abdul Hanan said.
Officials from Women Rights Protection of the Independent Human Rights Commission in the North have said that, since the beginning of 2013, over 500 cases of violence against women in four Northern Provinces have been registered.
"Unfortunately, in the other three provinces of the North, Sar-e-Pul, Samangan and Jowzjan, where the Commission is active, there aren't courts headed by females," said Fawzia Nawabi, the head of Women Rights Protection in the Northern provinces of Afghanistan.
"There are also problems at district governors' level, and courts or police chiefs don't come to work. In some instances...they might go to work only once or twice a week, as a result they cannot address the cases of violence against women," Nawabi said.
She said she regretted that in the past decade, there have been slogans for respecting women's rights and rhetoric around efforts for ending violence against women, but despite it all, the concerns of women's rights advocacy groups have increased.