Politics - Policy

ADUNWEA's Presentation to the UN on Policy Regarding Women's Rights in Afghanistan

Due to the American military action and involvement in Afghanistan and the recent overthrow of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan’s government is in a unique transitional phase that offers the world community a fleeting opportunity to implement a government infrastructure that creates permanent socio-political equality for women in Afghanistan. We are members of the Afghan Delegation to the United Nations for Women’s Equality in Afghanistan (ADUNWEA). ADUNWEA has been assigned by the United Nations to help the UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) determine how to better aid the women of Afghanistan. Our goal is to determine how to best utilize the UNAMA program in order to increase development and enforcement of social and political institutions that will aid in the advancement of national systems which will lead to women’s equality in Afghanistan. Throughout Afghanistan’s history, nations across the globe have been involved both positively and negatively in their development. Therefore, they all have a responsibility to the people of Afghanistan to aid them during this time of conflict. The UN has already recognized their role in aiding Afghanistan with the creation of UNAMA, and therefore offers the perfect platform to discuss alterations and expansions of UNAMA that will allow the world community to better assist Afghanistan’s women. ADUNWEA asks that when UNAMA’s renewal comes up for a vote in 2011, not only is it renewed but that the budget is increased from $168 million to $250 million. We believe this drastic budget increase and proper allocation of funding will increase the pace and extent of progress in Afghanistan. If done correctly, we believe that these policy changes will provide the groundwork necessary for Afghanistan to become an independent democracy that accepts women as equal members of society. We ask that UNAMA’s policies, in regards to the advancement of women, re-adjust their focus toward three key issues- education, government development and security. Furthermore, we ask that continuing aid and funding for Afghanistan be made conditional on the advancement of the status of women.

It is important to recognize that the quest for women’s rights in Afghanistan has a relatively long history. For example, during King Amanullah Khan’s short reign between 1919-1929, he implemented various progressive reforms for the rights of women and children, such as a restriction on polygamy and prohibition of the bride-price. However, Amanullah’s reform movement ended in 1929, after a major tribal revolt that toppled his government, and forced him to flee the country (“Soviet war in Afghanistan”, 2009).

Reforms on women’s rights were again attempted in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In 1965, the government of Afghanistan submitted a statement to the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women addressing the UN declaration on eliminating discrimination against women (CEDAW). In this statement, they recognized that their government supported the use of affirmative action policies to aid in the elimination of discrimination which would require, "combating of traditions, customs, and usages which thwart the advancement of women" (Barker, 2004).

Shortly after the Afghan government made their progressive sentiments known, Afghanistan fell under Soviet control. The USSR implemented an array of socialist policies, including several that specifically focused on ensuring equality for women. However, the Soviet government faced a great deal of opposition from a large-scale fundamentalist group known as the the Mujahideen. At this time, the USSR and the USA were in the midst of the Cold War. Therefore, it was in the political interest of both the USA and the Mujahideen to become allies. This alliance resulted in millions of dollars in American aid going to the Mujahideen, which led to their rise to power after the fall of the Communist Government in 1992. Over the course of the Mujahideen regime, burqas began to be a social standard, women were removed from government service, and government enforced violence against women visibly increased (Ahmed-Gosh, 2003).

The United States, along with other members of the international community, witnessed the destruction that was caused by the new regime and turned their support toward the Taliban. The Taliban rose to power in 1996 and proceeded to make sweeping changes in the social order. Women were treated worse than before. They were no longer able to go outside, except to buy food, and if they did leave their home they had to be accompanied by a male relative. Women were not allowed to seek medical help from male doctors and they were forced to cover themselves from head to toe. Additionally, women who held professional jobs, for instance doctors or teachers, were forced to be beggars or prostitutes to feed their families.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 once again drew global attention towards Afghanistan. The Taliban’s oppressive regime fell to their demise shortly after the USA began their "War on Terror" in 2001. After the Taliban fell, the political and social position of Afghan women began to improve. In the past decade, women have started to return to work and are no longer being forced to wear a burqa every time they leave their house. Recently, a small number of women have even been appointed to prominent positions in the government.

Additionally, In response to Afghanistan’s unequal policies towards women’s rights, various women’s advocacy groups have been created. One of the most prominent organizations is the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). RAWA was founded in 1977 by Afghan women’s rights advocate Meena Keshwar Kamal as an organization determined to defend the rights of women, freedom, and social justice throughout Afghanistan. In 1981, Kamal launched a bilingual feminist magazine called Payam-e-Zan, which translates to “Women’s Message”. The magazine was produced through RAWA to expose the criminal activities of fundamentalist groups that were damaging the development of human rights. RAWA has also established schools with hostels for boys and girls, a hospital for refugee Afghan women and children, as well as conducting vocational training courses for women in the nursing field and improving literacy rates (RAWA, 1997-2010). Yet, despite this progress, many challenges remain. The oppression of women is still incredibly prevalent- women are restricted from public life, forced into marriages, and denied an education (Qazi, 2010).

When discussing the rights of women in Afghanistan, the issue of education is imperative. As stated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to education.” However, in war torn countries such as Afghanistan, that is simply not the case (Iacopino & Rasekh, 1998). Before ADUNWEA can go on to present a plan to improve the rights of Afghan women through education, it is important to have an understanding of Afghanistan’s current state of education. According to the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, their latest data collected in 2008 shows that there are an estimated 10,993 general education schools in all of Afghanistan. An obvious improvement from the 6,039 schools in 2002 (Ayobi, 2010). Nonetheless, the number of schools is null and void being that Afghanistan has one of the lowest national literacy rates in the world- an astonishing 28% for Afghans ages six and above. The gender disparities in education are also very alarming, with only 36% of the student population in general education schools being female ("Women and Men," 2008).

As the appointed advisory committee specifically focused on how the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan can improve the rights of women, ADUNWEA proposes a three step program. In order for this program to be successful in implementing any change for women’s rights, we believe a 100 million dollar budget solely dedicated to improving education is greatly needed. The first step of this program begins with rebuilding educational institutions. "Rebuilding” does not simply imply building more schools, but providing a makeover for Afghanistan’s current educational system. This would mean improving the safety of schools and offering a secure place for both students and teachers. This can be accomplished by providing general education schools with the funds to hire school security guards who would be present on campus during and after school hours. We also hope to implement mandatory teacher training and female empowerment workshops, where instructors will receive training on how to better improve their teaching techniques. These new skills will then be utilized in the classroom to better prepare Afghans for a future in the competitive international community. Another part of this step is to rebuild new schools in locations where schools have been destroyed by the war. The Afghan Security Department released information in 2009 stating that 481 schools were either closed or burned by the insurgents and consequently resulting in 300,000 children losing access to an education (Ayobi, 2010). We recommend that UNAMA build more general education schools in rural and urban locations, where they are more accessible to both male and female students.

The second step in the program is to establish laws that enforce equality in Afghanistan’s educational system. The first being the institution of a quota for female teachers. The Ministry of Education admits that only 29% of the 158,000 teachers in Afghanistan are female, and that this is one of the main obstacles to increasing girls enrollment in schools (Ayobi , 2010). This makes the establishment of this quota for at least half the teachers to be female, more important than ever. The second legislation ADUNWEA suggests would require all Afghan students to remain in school until the age of 16 or completing a curriculum equivalent of tenth grade.

The third and final step to ADUNWEA’s educational improvement program is expanding educational opportunities to Afghanistan’s youth. With the support of the international community we hope to increase availability of student visas for an equal amount of both male and female Afghan students. The aim of this expanded visa program would be for Afghans to return to their country with the knowledge to reform and advance their country’s infrastructure.

Overall, ADUNWEA feels that this three step program with the proposed 100 million dollar budget is imperative for the advancement of women’s rights in Afghanistan for two main reasons; first in order to have a successful participatory democracy, Afghanistan needs to have an educated population. This means educating both men and women equally. Secondly, providing women with a good education will then give them the tools and opportunity to participate in their government and higher decision making positions ("Women and men," 2008).

While conditions for Afghan women have improved since 2001, in regards to democratic participation and legal equality, the government still often fails to provide women with the support they need. Many cases of violence and abuse towards women are still being overlooked and women's legal rights are being denied. ADUNWEA believes that women can gain equality if they are allowed full participation in Afghanistan’s government and requests that at least $30 million of the UNAMA budget be dedicated toward this effort. We suggest that further requirements be put into place to ensure that women have a more active role in policy making by granting them equal representation in governmental positions. Achieving a gender balance in the government will not only aid women, but Afghanistan as a whole. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women stated that “placing women in government can lead to less violence, advanced social institutions, and the ability for the country to progress to a first world status (Manjoo, 2008)."

The first step toward equal representation in government is ensuring equal access to the polls. During the August 2009 election, UNAMA aided the effort to create a free, credible, and fair election. However, out of approximately 15.6 million voters, only 6 million of them were women. Additionally, out of 3,178 provincial council candidates, only 328 of those candidates were women (Margesson, 2009). These numbers were drastically lower than the pre-election predictions, indicating that UNAMA was not adequately prepared to assist with the registration and candidate nomination process. Several factors could have effected voter turnout, including a lack of access to the polls as well as corruption and voter intimidation. Therefore, for future elections, ADUNWEA proposes that transportation to and from voting polls be provided. In an effort to deter voter intimidation and violence, ADUNWEA also recommends a larger presence of peace keeping troops to be stationed at every voting poll in addition to a UN official who will oversee the voting process warranting a fair election.

UNAMA’s Gender Unit aims to ensure gender equality in all development activities of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS). In order to accomplish this, ADUNWEA recommends providing legal aid and policy experts to the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) to better assist in their efforts to instill gender equality in all laws and policies that are established by the Afghan parliament. In addition to providing aid to the government, ADUNWEA also proposes that a portion of the allotted UNAMA budget be dedicated toward promoting unity between the legislative efforts and the efforts of local organizations. They can do this by providing grants to the local non-government organizations in Afghanistan that aim to provide vocational training, shelters and subsidized housing for homeless women and children who fled abusive relationships and poor living conditions.

In establishing the necessity of increasing the role of women in Afghanistan’s government, ADUNWEA recognizes that both the Afghan constitution and legal system has begun creating laws and guidelines to aid this process. However, the Afghan government has not yet developed enough to allow the checks and balances of its constitution to effectively eliminate the immense amount of corruption that results from a century of political unrest and warfare. The dissenters in the local police force as well as in parliament often defer to the customs and beliefs of their local mullahs and warlords. The Afghan government has also had problems maintaining authority due to the gradual return of the Taliban since 2003 (Smeal, & Cho, 2009).

One of the reasons UNAMA was initially formed was to aid in the implementation of the 2001 "Bonn Agreement," or “the Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions.” The Bonn Agreement specifically outlines the need of a UN mandated security force (Margesson, 2009). Given this recognized and continuing need, ADUNWEA believes that approximately $130 million of the allotted UNAMA budget should be dedicated towards establishing and maintaining security, which includes increasing the number of UN peacekeeping troops by at least 50,000 as well as providing equipment and training facilities. Without these measures, we run the risk of allowing Afghanistan to fall back into the firm grasp of the Taliban and thus lose any hope for the advancement of women for another hundred years.

The lack of adherence to laws that protect women by local law enforcement is a significant problem that ADUNWEA believes could be addressed through the training and monitoring of the Afghan police force. “Most police don’t understand what’s in the law, or they’re just against it,” said Manizha Nadiri, the Executive Director of the humanitarian group Women for Afghan Women (WAW). WAW owns and operates shelters for women and children in Kabul as well as the Kapisa Province and Mazar-i-Sharif. WAW is one of the many humanitarian organizations working on the ground in Afghanistan that has taken a position to maintain troop presence. They have officially stated that they “deeply regret having a position in favor of maintaining, even increasing troops" rather than “abandoning 15 million women and children to madmen (Nordland, & Rubin, 2010)."

The lower level of local law enforcement agencies are not the only ones that are having trouble adhering to national laws. In 2008, President Hamid Karzai issued a presidential decree to pardon three men who had been found guilty in court of gang-raping a young woman in the Province of Samangan (Ahmadi, 2010). Issuing a pardon to these rapists directly undermined the developing justice system and inherently weakened the role and power of the new constitution. The willingness of Karzai to dismiss this issue does not inspire much confidence in his ability to defend the rights of women against the increasing presence of Taliban extremists.

In fact, the London-based International Council on Security and Development released a report in September 2009 stating that “the Taliban has a permanent presence in 80 percent of Afghanistan, up from 72 percent in 2008 and 54 percent in 2007”. It defined "permanent presence" as an area where there is an average of one or more insurgent attacks, lethal and nonlethal, per week. (“Democrats torn on afghanistan”, 2009). Yet, according to a 2008 BBC/ABC poll, only 4% of Afghans would support the Taliban returning to power and 58% think they pose the biggest danger to the country (Smeal, & Cho, 2009 ). This current Taliban presence is one of the reasons that operating solely on humanitarian aid - and not military action - to protect the women of Afghanistan will not work. The 2009 UN Humanitarian Action Plan reported that in 2008 “approximately 40% of the country, including much of the South, remains inaccessible for most humanitarian organizations." Without access, the role of humanitarian organizations is mute. Before we can allow these organizations to take over the full rebuilding effort, the troops on the ground must establish security and accessibility. As the number of UN peacekeeping troops available is determined based solely on the troop contribution of UN member nations, ADUNWEA urges those member nations that do not already have independent troops on the ground in Afghanistan to contribute as many troops as possible to the UN peacekeeping mission.

Dr. Sima Samar is the Director of the Independent Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. Special Reporter for Human Rights in the Sudan, and is the highest-ranking woman in the Afghan government. She stated that “security must be re-established until the Afghan army and police can take over (Smeal, & Cho, 2009)." However, even president Karzai does not see that the Afghan army and police will be able to operate on its own until at least 2014. This is “a deadline that will be reached only if the stepped-up training effort continues with support from foreign capitals weary of the war (Gillies, 2010)." Yet, as of now this support is not visible. In November 2010, U.S. Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who serves as the commanding officer of NATO’s training mission in Afghanistan, estimated that the NATO mission faced a shortage of 900 trainers (Gillies, 2010)."

Furthermore, the recently approved U.S troop insurgency in Afghanistan has demonstrated the progress that can be made with an increased number of troops that adhere to a strict re-development and training plan. Bob Stewart, a UN commander who served in Bosnia in 1992, stated "We now have a situation where we have an increase of soldiers on the ground... and actually the principles of counter-insurgency are beginning to work and they are protecting the people. The key to this is whether the Afghan people can feel protected, safe and can live a decent life (“Mps vote to keep uk troops in Afghanistan” , 2010)."

While ADUNWEA fully believes that Afghanistan will one day be able to stand alone and provide justice and security to their civilians, that time has not come yet. The continued disparity between the laws and the actions of the law enforcement as well as the rising presence of the Taliban prove that the continued and even heightened presence of international peace keeping troops in Afghanistan is necessary to protect the nation’s female civilians. Yet, it is only with the support of the UN that Afghanistan will acquire the security and resources it needs. As Karl Inderfurth, an assistant Secretary of State for the region under President Clinton, said, “in a country where the gun is still the most powerful form of influence, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan at this point would be disastrous for the nation's women (“Democrats torn on afghanistan”, 2009)."

The members of ADUNWEA believe that these outlined suggestions in regards to education, government reform and security will increase the effectiveness of the UNAMA program. By implementing these policy changes, the world community will be better able to provide Afghanistan with the assistance it needs to develop a long lasting democracy that will hold women’s rights as a steadfast societal value. However, in order to implement these policies, we must procure the support of the United Nations and the world community.

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