women rights afghanistan

Canada's national newspaper the Globe and Mail has devoted a fair amount of ink this morning to the cause of women's rights and development in Afghanistan. We highly recommend reading all three feature articles that shed light on the critical need for Afghans to give women more of a share of justice and basic civil rights for the country, with the support of their international friends like Canada.

Make women’s rights Canada’s postwar priority

Ottawa should heed the advice of CARE Canada, which has called on the government to measure its post-conflict engagement in Afghanistan through the lens of improved human rights. Specifically, Canada could help tackle the barriers girls face in attending primary and secondary school; help train Afghan police in human rights; protect female leaders; ensure women are included in public-policy debate and peace-building; and focus on maternal and child health.

Afghan women need support so they can claim what is rightly theirs. Canada has an enduring obligation, and must not abandon what it has started...

In broken justice system, women in Kabul find their legal voice

In the seven years since Afghanistan adopted a constitution and set up a parliament, the country has put in place laws establishing equal rights and outlawing violence against women. Yet laws alone have changed little for the vast majority of women who must still rely on the good will of male relatives, rather than the formal legal system, to claim those rights.

In most parts of the country, the boundaries of an Afghan woman’s life is still set by men: what she wears, at what age she marries, whether she can go to a doctor when she’s ill, if she gets the inheritance she is due, and how much violence she is made to bear...

Globe's Leeder and Verma on Afghan women

Improving the plight of Afghan women and children is one of the key reasons cited by the Harper government for Canada's continued military involvement in the war-torn country.

But is our presence, along with the efforts of other western nations, having any impact?

“In Afghanistan, it’s useless to leave it to men to talk about women’s rights because they think only in terms of how they can benefit,” says Shahla Farid, a human-rights law professor at Kabul University.

“The other approach is for women to learn from each other and fight for their rights. It’s far from widespread, but we are seeing some results.”

Is the Afghan government seriously considering selling out the rights of half of its population in order to get a deal with the Taliban? The signs are ominous. Excerpted from a great essay by Wazhma Frogh in the Guardian:

The idea of subsuming women's rights so that the war can end has come in formal and informal talks between some parliamentarians, government officials and is also reported to be part of cynical discussions among some of the international diplomats in Kabul gatherings.

Many women activists believe the growing Talibanisation of the Afghan government will not only bring further instability, as it could upset the diverse ethnic composition of Afghanistan, but also predict that they will pay for this political settlement with their rights.

Despite receiving promises from the members of the international community and the Afghan government about the so-called "red lines" of talks with the Taliban, women activists are concerned that recent developments are step-by-step moves towards the loss of women's rights.

The Afghan peace jirga earlier this month legitimised criminal aspects of the insurgency by referring to offenders merely as political "angry brothers". It ensured that impunity will continue – for example, through the formation of a commission to review the cases of militant prisoners.

In the past two weeks, according to Afghan national television, around 15 ex-combatants have been released from two prisons in Parwan and Kabul. The longest trial that took place was four hours.

Women activists fear that the judiciary is not equipped to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. As a result, notorious war criminals and human rights violators will be released under this political settlement, including the men that threw acid in the faces of girls in Kandahar, those who assassinated the senior police officer, Malalai Kakar, and those militants who continue to target girls' schools.