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Afghan Women: An Appeal from Indian Feminists

Rebuild Afghanistan in Partnership with Women and Civil Society

1. The UN and the international community have initiated a much-needed peace process in Afghanistan. We welcome the agreement on an interim government that will initiate civil society processes, and women’s organizations should be part of this process.

2. The oppression of Afghan women had become symbolic justification for repeated military intervention by the international alliance. The media has shown the need to liberate the most oppressed women in the world from the Taliban. This concern should now be turned to re-building civil society with women partners.

3. The UN peace process in Bonn called groups for talks to plan a representative system for Afghanistan. UN negotiator Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi has said that all groups must include women. If women are excluded in the peace talks and not given adequate roles in the interim governments, there is danger that women may be cast in the same roles they were given during the earlier regime.

4. Women’s groups like the Revolutionary Association of Afghan Women (RAWA), Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights, have been working in Afghanistan under most oppressive conditions. They worked from behind the veil, at cost of their own lives. Many of these groups intervened at critical junctures, were in the forefront of the fight against the Taliban, and now have appealed they be partners in the regeneration of Afghanistan.

6. Besides the war, reports show that 97 percent of the Afghan women show symptoms of major depression. Doctors have reported a high incidence of oesophageal burns, as women swallowed battery acid or household cleaners in suicide bids. Afghanistan had a Human Development Index of 169, life expectancy of 43.7, adult literacy of 29.8. Only 12 per cent of its population had access to safe drinking water and its maternal mortality rate — 1,700 for 100,000 live births — was the second highest in the world. By 1997, Afghanistan had fallen off the data map and we hear no more about the welfare of its women and children. With the war these figures have only gotten worse.

7. A nation with a major humanitarian crisis needs desperate attention. Women and NGOs have to be involved in this major task as equal partners. World over, the innovative work and experiences of NGOs have established that grassroot changes and transformation can be brought through well planned programmes with full participation of women.

It is with these considerations we as Indian feminists appeal that:

—Afghan women be included in the peace and all political processes as partners.

—Women’s right, human rights, minority rights be safeguarded in the new nation.

—Afghan factions engaged in the war be demilitarized.

—An international peacekeeping force be constituted under the UN to ensure a secure, democratic and secular country.

—Innovative grassroots level programmes provide secure and sustainable livelihoods, food security, health care, education.

Kumari Jayawardena, Anuradha Chenoy, Kamla Bhasin, Radhika Kumaraswami, Syeda Hameed, Nigar Ahmed, Juhi Jain, Sonia Jabbar, Madhu Mehra, Khushi Kabir, Hameeda Hossain, Shamim Akhter, Seema Mustafa, Lalita Ramdas, Amarjeet Kaur

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