08 March 2002

UN Official Says Afghan Women Must Be Priority for Aid

United Nations -- "This year on International Women's Day, let us make a solemn pledge that we will never again permit the violations and state-sponsored oppression that conspired against the women of Afghanistan or any other women in any country whatsoever," Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population of Fund (UNFPA), said March 8.

The observance of International Women's Day March 8 at UN headquarters provided an opportunity for senior officials of UN agencies, such as Obaid; workers in non-governmental organizations, and international public figures discussed how to press forward in helping the women of Afghanistan take advantage of the opportunity provided by the formation of the Interim Administration in December to build a better life for themselves, their families, and their country.

At a panel discussion entitled "Afghan Women Today: Realities and Opportunities," Obaid was joined by U.S. First Lady Laura Bush, Queen Noor of Jordan, Afghan human rights activist Sima Wali, as well as Secretary General Kofi Annan and the presidents of the UN General Assembly and Security Council. The event was intended to celebrate the indomitable spirit, heroism and endurance of Afghan women; show the world's solidarity with them; and press the importance of education, health care and human rights. Muslim women such as Obaid and Wali spoke out against the Taliban for wrongly using the Koran as a means of keeping women oppressed.

"Many Muslim women like me were deeply saddened and angered to see how the values of Islam are twisted to justify the oppression of women and the promotion of terror," Obaid said. "It is the same Islam that motivated my parents to educate me and that empowered me to reach where I am today."

Obaid noted that Dr. Sima Samar, the Afghan interim minister of women's affairs, has said that it is hard to coax women out of their homes as long as there is no real security on the streets of Afghanistan.

"Afghan women have not flocked to throw away the purdah, not because they do not want to be free, but because they want to be safe. We must ensure that special measures are put in place to protect women and girls from all forms of violence," she said.

"The women have not been able to exercise the most basic right that we in more fortunate societies take for granted -- the right to life," Obaid said. "Giving birth should never be a sentence to death."

She recounted some of the shocking statistics that describe life for Afghan women brought about by malnutrition and little or no prenatal care: one in four children die before the age of five; one woman in 15 will die form complications of pregnancy and birth, nearly 99 percent of deliveries are at home and only 9 percent are attended by trained medical personnel; and reproductive health care is unavailable in two-thirds of the country's provinces.

The average Afghan women lives to the age of 44 and has eight children. Only 5 percent of women can read and write. Only 3 percent of girls attended school, the UNFPA director said.

Since Janaury UNFPA has sent cargo planes to Kabul loaded with essential medical equipment and supplies to rehabilitate three maternity hospitals and equipment for schools for married women.

Throughout the program, the most often mentioned highlight was that on March 23 Afghan girls will attend school openly for the first time in six years.

"The world will be watching on the first day of school, as teachers take their long-vacant places and students open their books for their first lessons," Mrs. Bush said. "When you give children books and an education, you give them the ability to imagine a future of opportunity, equality, and justice."

"At a girls school in northern Afghanistan, the principal, a man named Diwana Qol, said, 'these girls are part of our future...we will need all of our children -- boys and girls -- to be well educated if we are to rebuild our country from all this war,'" the U.S. First Lady recalled.

Wali, president of Refugee Women in Development and one of three women delegates to the Afghan peace talks in Bonn, said that for 23 years she "anguished over how to explain the pain, suffering, and grief that the women of Afghanistan have endured."

"Afghan women have not only been subjected to the generalized horror of war...but, in an historically unprecedented way, became the targets of a new kind of war," she said. "The ferocity of attacks against Afghan women has been so severe and draconian that the term 'gender apartheid' was coined to describe the extent of the new kind of horror aimed directly at them."

"For more than 20 years I waged my own jihad for social justice and peace as the rights of my Afghan sisters have been systematically violated to the extent of rendering us as non-citizens in our own country," Wali said. She noted that 12 million women have been forced to live in abject poverty and countless have been forced into prostitution and subject to trafficking as her country became one of the most destitute and war damaged in the world.

Wali said "culture" should not be used as an excuse to keep Afghan women subservient and disenfranchised.

"I am here today to tell you my culture does not propagate violence, torture, rape, prostitution or the trafficking and sale of young women and their children. It does not drive women into poverty and starvation, deny them education or medical care. My religion does not promote the bondage of women. It does not dehumanize women," she said.

"During late 1920s Afghan women were granted the right to vote. In 1964 the constitution granted us equal rights under the laws of Muslim Afghanistan, yet almost forty years later a male-led militia took away these very basic human rights," Wali noted.

She urged the international community to make restoration of rights to women a condition for aid. "Anything less is tantamount to succumbing to discounting the needs and aspirations of 67 percent of Afghan society," Wali said.

"How we respond to the gender crisis in Afghanistan will reveal how the free world measures up to its belief in its own ideals," Wali said. "Let us wipe the tears of a nation of women in pain."

Queen Noor, a longtime advocate of women's rights, especially for Muslim women and refugees, said that women and children must be seen as partners in the process of peace-building and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Recounting her recent meetings with Afghan refugee women in Pakistan, Queen Noor said that "the priorities of the Afghan women I met in the region were simple and basic...security first and foremost, health, education and more of a voice in community and national affairs."

"These women represent an enormous and inadequately tapped resource for recovery and peace-building. In the community, in business, in the professions, women's voices are critical for accelerating overall improvement in standards of living and security," her majesty said.

"As one Afghan educator told me: If we educate women they will know their rights. They will study the Koran and will learn that Islam gives them rights, including the right to education equal to that of men," Queen Noor said.

In countries like Afghanistan, promoting women's education is not an easy task especially outside urban areas, she observed. "It will require working the grass routes to empower women to play a role in their communities."

"This cannot be achieved by simply changing legislation at the national level. Governments, however well intentioned, can only do so much. Success will depend on putting local communities and women in the driver's seat and expanding and improving the work of nongovernmental organizations that can deliver benefits," Queen Noor said.

"Afghanistan's women are crying out for concrete and practical help to help themselves. They've waited too long for such help," Queen Noor said. "All of us in the international community -- whether government or civil society -- have an obligation to work with these brave women to empower them to fully contribute to the recovery and reconstruction and security of their nation today and into the future."