24 February 2010

Women Key to More Prosperous Afghanistan

 

Afghanistan’s women and girls are a largely untapped source, whose empowerment would help increase prosperity and stability.

Afghanistan’s women and girls are a largely untapped source, whose empowerment would help increase prosperity and stability.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington — Investment in women is the single most effective development strategy globally, and Afghanistan is no exception, says a State Department official, who outlined for a Senate panel the ways the Obama administration is working to promote women’s rights as a powerful but underused force to improve Afghanistan.

Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, spoke February 23 to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women’s Issues, and to the Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs.

In her written testimony, she praised the “many capable Afghan women leaders [who] risk their lives every day,” whether in politics, civil society, health, business or education. Facing intimidation and threats, these women are taking risks “to work alongside men to create a better future for their country,” Verveer said, adding that Afghan women are working as teachers, midwives, farmers and members of police forces and provincial councils.

U.S. support for human rights includes working for the empowerment of women in Afghanistan, and their participation is “critical for sustainable development, better governance and peace” in their country, she said.

“The era of brutal repression by the Taliban has passed,” Verveer said. “Yet on every measure of development and in every sphere, women in Afghanistan continue to suffer solely because they were born female.”

Their immediate post-Taliban gains in the political realm have suffered due to deteriorating security conditions, which have allowed assassinations and threats against women who hold or aspire to public positions. The Afghan government has failed to fully protect or include them in decisionmaking, she said.

“Their political gains today appear fragile and require urgent and sustained attention from the international community,” Verveer said.

Health care deficiencies have given Afghanistan the world’s second-highest maternal mortality rate. In education, Verveer said that although 35 percent of Afghanistan’s student population is female, as opposed to none during the Taliban era, only about 21 percent of Afghan women can read and write, and the female illiteracy rate is as high as 90 percent in rural areas of the country. Girls who want an education also face threats from extremists, who have burned schools, gassed schoolgirls, and thrown acid in the faces of female students, she said.

Verveer said violence against women and girls “remains endemic in Afghan society,” and is “perhaps the greatest remaining impediment to women’s full civic participation.”

That violence “cannot be explained away as cultural or private,” she said. “It is criminal and must be addressed as such.”

“Afghan women suffer domestic abuse, rape, forced marriages, forced prostitution, kidnappings, so-called ‘honor’ killings, and cultural practices that use daughters as payment to settle disputes and that condone self-immolation,” she said. About 80 percent of crimes and disputes are settled through traditional justice mechanisms, which she said “are often flagrantly discriminatory toward women.”

To unleash the “largely untapped” potential of Afghan women, the Obama administration is among those helping to remove barriers that stand in their way, she said.

The January 29 women’s action plan for women and girls in Afghanistan unveiled by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton includes U.S.-funded initiatives to improve women’s security; public- and private-sector leadership opportunities; access to health care, education and government services; and the ability to take advantage of economic opportunities, particularly in agriculture, Verveer said.

The United States is training women at local levels to better equip them to take on political leadership roles, and is supporting Afghan civil society organizations that provide civic education and media training. Among the highlights of the U.S. role, Verveer mentioned:

• A $26.3 million program of small loans to women-led nongovernmental organizations teaching office, handicraft and agricultural skills.
• Training of 525 female police officers and 600 women who work in Afghanistan’s justice sector.
• Support for family response units largely staffed by female police and which offer protection for those reporting crimes.
• Workshops on domestic violence to train 550 male and female police officers.
• A $2 million program to teach religious and political leaders the importance of human and women’s rights within the context of Islam.
• Economic development assistance and training to teach 52,500 women how to harvest and market cashmere products from their goat herds.
• Training and supplies to get 180 women started in poultry breeding and management enterprises.
• More than 100,000 women recipients of U.S. Agency for International Development microfinance loans, workplace skills training and cash-for-work programs.
• Funding to establish primary schools, adult literacy and teacher training programs to benefit women and men in rural areas.
• Assistance to increase the number of midwives and women health care workers and increase women’s access to health services.

The empowerment of women is good not only for the sake of human rights, Verveer said. The scale of reform needed in Afghanistan requires the commitment and participation of both women and men, and women’s participation in public life will also allow them to contribute to their country’s economic activity.

“It is a simple fact that no country can get ahead if half its population is left behind. We know from an accumulating body of studies and research from governments, multilateral organizations, corporations and think tanks that investing in women is the single most effective development strategy that we have for poverty alleviation, economic growth and a country’s general prosperity,” she said.

“There can be no progress, in Afghanistan or in any other part of the world, without women’s progress,” Verveer said.