In Afghan peace process, activists worry both sides are willing to trade away women’s rights, so women are demanding a strong voice at the table to prevent that.
In this Monday, Feb. 18, 2019, photo, Khadeja, 16, who was burned by a pot of scalding hot water thrown by her husband, shows her wounds, at a women's shelter office in Herat, Afghanistan. The suffering of young women like Khadeja is why women rights activists say they are demanding a seat at the table in negotiations between the government and the Taliban over peace and Afghanistan’s future.
The suffering of young women like Khadeja is why women rights activists say they are demanding a seat at the table in negotiations between the government and the Taliban over peace and Afghanistan’s future. Attempts were also made to severely limit women’s participation in the first round of all-Afghan talks between the government and Taliban, meant to have been held last week in Qatar. Under pressure from the Qataris, Ghani reportedly pared down the women in his list of participants from 54 to fewer than 15. The organization sponsoring the talks, Qatar’s Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, further reduced it to 10.
Ahead of negotiations, the Taliban say they will accept that girls go to school and women work and even be judges. But they say a woman cannot become the country’s leader or the Supreme Court chief justice. International funding for projects for women is drying up. Political will is also uncertain. Ghani refused to put legislation on the Elimination of Violence Against Women to a vote in parliament, fearing it would be defeated by the overwhelming conservative majority, say activists.
A survey released in January said only 15 percent of 2,000 men polled believed women should be allowed to work outside the home after marriage and two-thirds said women already had too many rights. The survey was conducted by U.N. Women and Promundo, a group promoting gender justice.It wasn’t like this before four decades of war, activists say. Women once were in the workforce, went to school in mixed-gender classes and even served as generals in the military.
Pakzad, the women’s rights activist, said she wishes she had the freedoms her mother did. She said she was one of 15 brothers and sisters and her father made sure they all had equal access to education, even though he “didn’t know a single word” about women’s rights. “They want to let me know they are watching me,” she said, “even sometimes telling me what street I have crossed and when.”In the western province of Herat, Khadeja’s mother died when she was young, and her father married a woman who resented her and wanted her out of the house. They took her out of school after the fifth grade even as she pleaded with her father to let her continue.
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