Development of Womens Rights in Afghanistan

Development of Womens Rights in afghanistanProgress, Stagnation and RegressionA lot need to be through before the equality of political rhetoric becomes an everyday reality forwomen in Afghanistan (Amnesty International UK, 2013).Since the disempowerment of the Taliban, the status of womens rights has seenprogress, stagnation and even regression. The Bonn Agreement of December 2001, endorsedthe mental home of a gender-sensitive government and laid the groundwork for theMinistry of Womens Affairs. In addition to MOWA, the Afghan government also created theOffice of the State Minister for Women and set up a Gender Advisory Group (Sarabi, 20033). Moreover, the Bonn conference endorsed the establishment of the AfghanistanIndependent Human Rights Commission which is, amongst others, responsible for theadvancement of womens rights.Over the years the Afghan government continued its efforts to promote womensrights by adopting its Constitution on January 4, 2004, that incorporates the pri nciple ofequality in denomination 22 as well as a guaranteed quota for women in the bicameral NationalAssembly in article 83 and article 84 (Ballington Dahlerup, 2006 253). On October 1st, 2004,after years of political oppression, women voted in the first democratic elections over the lastyears, women held 27-28 percent of parliamentary seats in the Wolesi Jirga (The World Bank,2013). These positive developments, however, are non secure. For example, the latest electoral impartiality has reduced the quota of guaranteed seats for women in provincial assemblies from aquarter to a fifth (International Crisis Group, 2013 ii). Furthermore, it is often criticized byfeminists from within and outside of Afghanistan that those women who hold a politicalmandate are only there to symbolize the Western success, and simultaneously support withtheir presence the Western imperialist as well as the Afghan patriarchal oppression, but in facthave no say in politics (Franks, 2003 148 Wajika, 2008 14 0). An example for this claim isthe report of Malalai Joya, a former collection women, who was pelted with water bottles byother male assembly men and threatened by Rape her addresss (Ihlau Koelbl, 2009 253)while delivering a speech in parliament.Another let go is the serious discrepancy between theory and practice, between wordsand signatures on paper and effective actions to implement signed conventions and approvedlaws. The Afghan government sanctioned the United Nations Convention on the Elimination ofall Forms of Discrimination against Women in 2003, and adopted the Elimination of ViolenceAgainst Women Law in 2009, what can be draw as positive developments. However,often not all adopted laws are known by judges, prosecutors and lawyers, nor are they alwaysagreed to, and therefore are not applied. Furthermore, that conservative members ofparliament oppose, for example, the EVAW law, calling it un-Islamic (International CrisisGroup, 2013 ii), is an example of the fundamental incompatibility of article 22 and article 7(compliance to the UN Charter, inter-state agreements, international treaties to whichAfghanistan has joined, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) with article 3 (nolaw shall contravene the tenets and provisions of the holy religion of Islam) of the AfghanConstitution. The interpretation of what counts as un-Islamic differs immensely inAfghanistan.That girls and women now have the right to teaching and to employment is also avery positive development. However, statistics show that the proportion of girls who go toschool and university is not only lower than that of boys, but declines with every take aim ofhigher education less than one in five women in Afghanistan is literate (CSO UNICEF,2012 110). Also the female labor participation rate did not significantly increase over the lastten years (World Bank, 2014). But with the historical background of womens rightsviolations under the Taliban regime as well as the decades of warfa re in mind, no one can expectwomen to suddenly break out of the impostal role allocation between men and women inAfghanistan. Furthermore, it needs to be pointed out that not all Afghans support theemancipation of girls and women. Girls schools are burned down as a symbol for the fightbetween tradition and change (Brieger, 2005 134). There is a common use of night letters messages of insurgents groups to threat women and girls who go to school or to work, leavetheir homes, speak to non-family men, or call radio stations with music requests (ACUNS,2013 108). Last year, UN Women condemned the increasing intimidation and targetedkillings of Afghan female government officials and public figures and called for justice (UNWomen, 2013). Moreover, it has to be mentioned, that in 2011 Afghanistan was named themost dodgy country for a women to live in, because of high levels of violence, poorhealthcare and poverty (BBC, 2011). Especially domestic violence against women is aproblem that has become a regular feature of almost all households, and that shapes everyaspect of womens and girls lives their health, their livelihoods, their access to social andcultural resources, and their educational opportunities (Global Rights Partners for Justice,2008 1). Besides, many cases are not account to the police nor prosecuted. The continuingpractice of child marriages and obligate marriages is one of those forms of violence againstwomen and girls. Although getting reliable data is difficult, it is estimated that 60-80 per centof all marriages in Afghanistan are forced (UNFPA, 2012).All in all it can be said that there are improvements of the situation of women and girlsin Afghanistan. However, the level of progress differs between the regions of the country,urban and boorish areas, and between those districts where ISAF troops are present and thosewhere they are not. In a country where the emancipation of women has always been acontroversial issue (there have been triple eff orts to establish womens rights inAfghanistan from above in the past one hundred years see Amnullh Khn, MohammedZahir Shah, Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, or the PDPA) a change of the status of womenin society is a long-term process. After thirteen years of intervention in Afghanistan, the IChas to recognize that fact and has to demand that a lot of mistakes were made. In their articleSchwere strategische Fehler des Westens, Mariam Notten and Ute Scheub cited the survey ofthe Afghan author Lina Abirafeh about the counterproductive gender-strategy of the West.Abirafeh criticizes different circumstances that led to the partial unsuccessful person of Western attempts toestablish gender equality in Afghanistan. Amongst others, she mentions the fact that manyAfghan women feel like their own wishes of a self-determined life are not heard by the IC,but rather ignored. The stigmatization of Afghan women as victims and not as active membersof the Afghan society is considered to be problemati c. The result of this discourse is that thereis resistance against the Western efforts to enhance womens rights in Afghanistan (NottenScheub, 2009 34). The IC has to recognize that it is not only necessary to establish a legal simulation for the implementation of womens rights, but that the volition to actually live in acommunity where men and women are equal has to come from within society. and so it isimportant, for instance, to support NGOs in their grass-roots work. Also in the future.