Women's Gains at Risk in Afghanistan - By M. Ashraf Haidari

Afghan women have now regained most of the freedoms that they lost under the Taliban’s gender apartheid, which ended seven years ago. Women have played a constructive role in each political process from the Bonn conference (2001) to the emergency and constitutional Loya Jirgas (2002-2004) to the presidential and parliamentary elections (2004-2005). Their participation in these historic processes has not only helped Afghanistan to establish its key state institutions but also has ensured that women secure equality to men in leading these institutions in the future. The Afghan government is committed to women’s constitutional rights and their implementation as evidenced by various mechanisms established in the government so far. The Afghan ministry of women’s affairs was created to manage the formulation of government-wide gender policies and their execution through line ministries. Headed by a woman, the ministry currently has about 1,200 staff in Kabul and across 28 of its provincial directorates. In January 2002, President Karzai surprised women’s rights advocates by signing the declaration of the essential rights of Afghan women, which some 300 Afghan women from various exile countries had drafted in the capital of Tajikistan in June 2000. The declaration encouraged Afghan women from across the country to gather symbolically in Kandahar province—the birthplace of the Taliban—to adopt the Afghan women’s bill of rights in September 2003. At that historic gathering, Afghan women resolved to strive towards not only including the bills’ provisions in the new Afghan constitution but also ensuring their implementation afterwards. They did succeed, as article 22 of the constitution affirms women’s equality to men before the law, and article 83 guarantees women 27 percent of the seats in the lower house and 17 percent of the seats in the upper house of the Afghan parliament.

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Contributor: M. Ashraf Haidari
Published Date: March 21, 2008