KABUL, 2. January: Life has improved for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but that is not saying a lot: Today, 87 per cent of Afghan women are illiterate; one in four faces a forced marriage; only one in three girls has access to education.
Violence against women is still a reality, the UN reported in December, with dozens of girls and women murdered by their own families.
This is not a reality that will change overnight, believes Canadas Rights and Democracy Afghan director, Palwasha Hasan, but it will change.
Hasan, 37, is spearheading Rights and Democracy’s effort to improve the rights of women in her homeland. Thanks to a 5-million US dollar grant from the Canadian government, Hasans team will work specifically on two areas: Reforming family law and instituting the use of a national marriage contract throughout Afghanistan.
What is unusual about Hasan and her team is that all are Afghan and there are an equal number of men working alongside women for womens rights – this in a country that six short years ago was one of the most hostile in the world toward women, banning them from school and the workplace.
If women did venture out in public, they were covered head to toe in blue-grey tents with mesh over their eyes.
Nevertheless, men have often been at the forefront of womens rights in Afghanistan, Hasan said. The 10-member team she has assembled since September will travel throughout six Afghan provinces to meet with as many of the 400 or so womens groups as they can. The idea is to hear from women themselves what issues they want to see resolved by the law reform.
– We are not here to impose solutions. We are facilitators, Hasan noted.
This is a point that Hasan – who fled Afghanistan with her family in 1984 and returned five years ago – wishes non-Afghan aid workers would grasp. Western experts who descend on the country and try within a short time to impose non-Afghan solutions are not helping Afghans rebuild their own country, she said.
Afghan people are more receptive to change than many people outside the country realize, but it is important not to flag issues as Western.
– You need equality between men and women everywhere in the world, said Hasan, who has a master’s degree in post-war recovery studies from the University of York in Britain. – It is a question of removing the hurdles to that goal, added she.
Dismantling hurdles means dealing with traditional opposition and the realities on the ground. As it tours the provinces, Hasans team plans to meet with mullahs and village elders as well as women. If a mullah insists on speaking only to a man about the need to improve womens rights, one of the men will talk with him.
The realities of Afghan life include the refusal of women to take advantage of their newly conferred rights. In the case of family law reform, for example, it is important to understand why women do not seek divorce even from an abusive spouse, Hasan said.
– Traditionally, it is the father who is granted custody of children (får forældreretten) in a divorce. Women will not risk never seeing their children, she explained.
A national marriage registry is needed, she added, because without one in a country where marriages are generally not registered, a woman risks finding herself in an illegal marriage.
While opposition from religious leaders is strong, Hasan has seen signs of greater openness. She recently attended a peace jirga in Afghanistan. She watched as a mullah rose to speak. He was dressed in typical provincial clothes.
She was expecting a reactionary speech, with maybe even an expression of support for the Taliban. But far from approving, Hasan said, the mullah condemned the Taliban, saying, “They are killing our family.”
Women want greater freedom, said Hasan, noting that 47 per cent of Afghans who voted in the countrys first election in 2004 were women.
– These kinds of changes shows a big change in peoples mentality, concluded she.
Kilde: The Push Journal
