Afghanistan about to further reduce rights of women
09:53, 4 April 2009
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It's the weekend! And that means: time for a personal Jayne blawg:The government of Afghanistan is about to launch a new law that will severely limit the rights of all women in the country, turning back the clock on so many of the gains of the last seven years. Under this law, rape of women within marriage is legalized, women may seek work, education or doctor's appointments only with the male head-of-household's permission, and only fathers and grandfathers would be granted custody of children. Afghan President Karzai signed the law last month, but his government refuses to share the text with even its own people. The law clearly violates both UN conventions and the Afghan constitution, two things that Karzai promised to uphold.
You can read more about the law in the Guardian, the Telegraph, even Fox News. U.N. Human Rights Chief, Navi Pillay, says the law is another clear indication that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is getting worse not better.
Where are the public challenges to Karzai and Afghan warlords from country donors and Western leaders? Where are the confrontations and public disdain by those who should be holding the Afghan government responsible for these type of actions? Good luck finding such. I'm sorry to say that President Obama, by his own admission, does not see the rights of women in Afghanistan as a priority , per his being asked on April 4 about this issue at a press conference in Europe. If the price of fighting al-Qaeda means supporting the Taliban and other fundamentalists to turn against such and having women in the region re-assume the status of animals... or slaves... the Western governments will look the other way. Sorry, gals!
Like many Americans, I first became acutely aware of Afghanistan long before September 11, 2001; I started paying attention when emails flew around the Internet in the mid-1990s, talking about the horrendous conditions for women under the Taliban. The USA and its allies invaded Afghanistan to find the coordinators of the attacks on the USA in 2001, but the reality is that many millions of people were hoping that this invasion would stop the persecution of women in Afghanistan, and these people's continued support for military, aid workers and money being sent to the country has come from the passion to help Afghan women, not to find a group of international criminals.
World leaders' inaction on this is not about respecting cultural differences; its about supporting state-sanctioned oppression. If institutionalized oppression of a people was wrong in South Africa, if it was wrong in the American South, it's wrong NOW. The only hope women in Afghanistan have for stopping this law is if Western donors threaten to pull funding and its support of the Afghan government, and that will only happen if people start pressuring their own governments. So please: write every elected official at the federal level in your country and let them know you find it unacceptable for your government to fund oppressive regimes that don't respect human rights and want women to become chattel. Tell them you want pressure on the Afghan government NOW to honor its own constitution and respect universal human rights. Tell your friends to do the same.
Remember: SILENCE MEANS APPROVAL.
