Ann Jones’ recent piece, “Women in Afghanistan” is an excellent reminder of the every day horrors that women in that country face. Jones writes,
“The fact is that the “liberation” of Afghan women is mostly theoretical. The Afghan Constitution adopted in 2004 declares that “The Citizens of Afghanistan — whether man or woman — have equal Rights and Duties before the Law.” But what law? The judicial system — ultra-conservative, inadequate, incompetent, and notoriously corrupt — usually bases decisions on idiosyncratic interpretations of Islamic Sharia, tribal customary codes, or simple bribery. And legal “scholars” instruct women that having “equal Rights and Duties” is not the same as being equal to men.
Post-Taliban Afghanistan, under President Hamid Karzai, also ratified key international agreements on human rights: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Treaty of Civil and Political Rights, and CEDAW: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Like the Constitution, these essential documents provide a foundation for realizing the human rights of women.
But building on that paper foundation — amid poverty, illiteracy, misogyny, and ongoing warfare — is something else again.”
Jones goes on in excruciating detail to delineate the painful reality of Afghan women’s lives:
“For most Afghan women the burqa is the least of their problems.
Afghanistan is just about the poorest country in the world. Only Burkina Faso and Niger sometimes get worse ratings. After nearly three decades of warfare and another of drought, millions of Afghans are without safe water or sanitation or electricity, even in the capital city. Millions are without adequate food and nutrition. Millions have access only to the most rudimentary health care, or none at all.
Diseases such as TB and polio, long eradicated in most of the world, flourish here. They hit women and children hard. One in four children dies before the age of five, mostly from preventable illnesses such as cholera and diarrhea. Half of all women of childbearing age who die do so in childbirth, giving Afghanistan one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. Average life expectancy hovers around 42 years.
Notice that we’re still talking women’s rights here: the fundamental economic and social rights that belong to all human beings.
There are other grim statistics. About 85% of Afghan women are illiterate. About 95% are routinely subjected to violence in the home. And the home is where most Afghan women in rural areas, and many in cities, are still customarily confined.”
She goes on to point out that:
–Women are for all intents considered the property of men and can be sold into marriage or sexual slavery and raped with impunity.
–During the past year there have been 150 confirmed suicides among women in western Afghanistan, 197 in Herat and 34 in the south.
Doesn’t really jive with the rosy picture that President Bush likes to brag about, does it?
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