The Fight for Women's Rights in Afghanistan Today
Women in Afghanistan lead extremely difficult, censored and often dangerous lives. They have few liberties, they are not allowed to venture outside their homes without a male chaperone, they can't work outside the home, make money of their own or even choose their marriage partners in a lot of cases. As you can imagine, domestic violence and instances of rape have sky-high occurence levels and there is little being done to stop the influence of the Taliban from destroying the entire women's rights field in the country. In 2010 the Afghanistan President even enforced legislation for men to demand sex from their wives every four days. If the women refuse, their husbands can technically now legally attack them.
Cause for even greater concern came this year when Barack Obama endorsed the Afghanistan President's bid to start negotiations with, and I quote, "moderate" branches of the Taliban. The word moderate isn't a word you'd use to describe these men. They are the men who enforced all these frightening laws against women's freedoms in the first place and who are contact with warlords and other extremist parties. Something needs to be done to help the women in Afghanistan. Even more disturbingly, the Taliban are not the only forces threatening Afghan women's basic human rights. According to Matthias Tomszack, one of the lead campaigners and activists at SAWA,
"Most of the members of Afghanistan's parliament are warlords who turned into "democrats" but have not change their position towards women at all, as can be seen in the passing through parliament of the legislation (mentioned above)."
The web address at the bottom of the page is for the Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan. I'm currently getting ready to put in for my member subscription, it'd be great if some of you could do the same. Women have the right to live their own lives, to work and play freely and to live in safety and security with people who love them and value their contribution. We need to fight for women, anyone really, who doesn't have this right.
A. Macdonald
M. Tomszack