Afghan men work to strengthen the fight for women & girls in Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s future has never been more uncertain. As 2014 approaches there are worrying signs that Afghan women’s rights, and the push for equality, will diminish once again. 2014 coincides with the departing of the international troops during the same year the Presidential election for the country will be held.
Perhaps the most concerning outcome of the forces departing Afghanistan is the fate of Afghan women and girls and their future. There are already ominous signs that women and girl’s rights in Afghanistan face a bleak future, despite the many gains that have been pushed forward since 2001.
With many political analysts claiming that Afghanistan is entering a doomed era of another civil war, and/or even a complete Taliban reclaim of power, the future for Afghan women does not look bright at this point.
“A Talibanized regime is the biggest misery to women. There is no room for women’s rights in a Talibanized regime,” shares Ali Shahidy, a self-proclaimed male feminist and co-founder of the Afghanistan based Psycho-social Development and Support Organization.
“There is no tolerance for women in Taliban sovereignty because a Taliban ideology never recognizes the human values of a woman,” adds Shahidy.
Shahidy claims that if the events of 2014 bring more conflict in the region, then the role of women will reverse to its past status abolishing the human rights fought for in the past decade.
“I think we need to realize the connection between international troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Afghan women’s rights,” says Shahidy. “The presence of international troops means ‘security’, or at least, ‘better security’. And absence of them means ‘insecurity’. An insecure environment adversely affects women’s rights and augments their plight. For instance, insecurity affects their education, employment opportunities, women’s entrepreneurship, their presence and participation in political and social spheres,” Shahidy continued.
As worrying signs are beginning to grow throughout the country, on May 18, 2013 an effort to have Afghanistan’s 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, known as the EVAW law originally endorsed by the Afghan parliament, ended in disarray. Those against the law characterized it as a violation of Afghan religious and cultural values as they ignored the country’s continuing issues of child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence and the prosecution of rape victims. Those who blocked the new legislation conversely ignored human values, as well as the health and social damages of child and forced marriages.
The opposition against this law by conservative Members of Parliament has been seen as a serious recent blow to the women’s rights movement in Afghanistan.
As more statistics are being revealed, the Taliban appear to not be the only ones to blame for the suppression of women in the country.
Far too many ‘so-called’ honor killings have taken place throughout the Afghan region in the past decade. This form of violence has not only included family members who have been viewed as a ‘dishonor’ to the family, but this type of violence has also been extended to journalists, lawyers and even a civil servants who were seen as ‘dishonorable’ only because of the work they did. Most of these killings have not been publicly blamed on the Taliban.
Instead the violence and intimidation has been blamed often in today’s Afghanistan news media on ‘unknown gunmen’.
According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, at least 600 women and girls are currently imprisoned in Afghanistan for ‘moral crimes’, showing a 50 percentincrease over the last 18 months.
Most of the reports and statistics on Afghan women and girls in 2012 has charted domestic crime victims who have fled forced or underage marriages. Others have experienced extreme domestic violence. Some of these women have also suffered under court injustice as they have been legally convicted of sex outside of marriage – after being raped.
Shahidy claims that such incidents of injustice against women are pervasive in the country because of Afghanistan’s cultural belief that holds close to the rule that women are less in society.
“We have witnessed cases where the perpetrators were family members or close relatives of the victim women. Most men still believe that women belong only to a home sphere, and shouldn’t appear in public arenas,” outlined Shahidy.
But can society in Afghanistan really change?.. read more:
