UN Report on Afghanistan: What it Means for Afghan Women

Sisters doing it for themselves? Our Afghan sisters just might be. The latest UN report on Afghanistan shows that women are more interested in politics (yay), everyone is more interested in local politics than national politics (the Karzai factor?), and the dreaded marital rape law may not be a done deal.

For those of you who haven't heard, the Shia Personal Status law made international news headlines last spring due primarily to a provision legalizing marital rape. The law was viewed as a crass attempt by President Karzai to shore up the important misogynistic-war-lord vote in the presidential election. (And you thought the pandering of our presidential candidates was bad.) In addition to marital rape, the law denies women custody of their children and endorses child marriage. Yeah. It sucks. However, an unsucky law eliminating violence against women, endorsed by Karzai, is currently under Parliamentary review. Whether this law or the pro-marital rape law would take precedence is unclear. What are the odds? Probably not great, but we'll have our fingers crossed.

Next up, former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill's observation that all politics are local seems to hold true in Afghanistan: turnout for the Afghan provincial elections was higher than for the presidential election. A number of writers and commentators have argued the importance of Afghanistan's tribal society and the impracticality of strong central-government-style democracy. Why is this good news for women? it's often easier for women to participate in local government than on the national level, and there is evidence that women's involvement in local government leads to more equitable distribution of resources, which makes life better for everyone in the community. Now we need the power to shift away from the corrupt central government and to the provincial governments where women have a better chance of exerting influence and power.

Finally, women are more interested in politics than they used to be. The UN Aid Mission to Afghanistan and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported that Afghan women demonstrated an increased interest in political matters, despite voting in fewer numbers than men. "Increased interest in political matters" is not defined, so we don't know from this how it manifests. It may simply be evidence of a recognition of the connection between political matters and personal matters. While of course we'd like to see more women voting, an increase in interest is an increase in interest and we can add it to the positive developments list.

Yes, there's bad news. Embassies in Kabul reported an increase in visa requests; attacks against the aid community are up, as are civilian casualties; and there are no indications that the security situation will improve. However, the section on suicide attacks in Kabul notes that several planned attacks in Kabul were prevented by Afghan security institutions. Did we hear about these successes? Didn't think so. Cause if it bleeds it leads, and if it doesn't, we'll find something that does. We hear too little about what's going well, and probably too much about what's going poorly. Is it all sunshine and roses for Afghan women's rights? No. But it's not all doom and gloom either. So keep hope alive, my friends.

Photo from wikimedia commons