50% of Afghans, the Women, Fight to Assert Their R : Deskdemon.com Forums

I know we're all tired of hearing about this but...

New York Times

June 6, 2002
50% of Afghans, the Women, Fight to Assert Their Rights
By BARBARA CROSSETTE

hen Afghanistan's grand council convenes next week to begin creating a new political order, one task will be to name the writers of a new Constitution. There has never been a moment with more promise — or long-term danger — for Afghan women.

Three of them — a lawyer, a law professor and a judge — are bringing that message to New York this week, along with an urgent plea for help, as they meet American foundations, law firms and the Bar Association of the City of New York.

Soraya Paikan, a lawyer and member of the grand council, or loya jirga, said in an interview on Monday that there are signs that newly won women's freedoms are already under threat, and that women must take part in writing the Constitution if they are to achieve legal protection.

The task of drawing women into the process can seem overwhelming. "Afghan women don't know their rights," said Ms. Paikan, 42, a founder of the Afghan Women Lawyers and Professionals Association, which emerged in January from four years underground. "During this time, we need to push to bring the concerns of Afghan women to the commission."

She is in New York with two colleagues from the association's board — Hangama Anwari, a law scholar, and Nafisa Kabuli, a judge in the struggling juvenile justice system. They are racing to set up a training center in Kabul and information offices around the country.

The association has trained 40 women in basic human rights practices. It wants to send dozens more across Afghanistan to explain to women in towns and rural villages about the evolution of the country's political life and how they can work to ensure that developments work to their advantage. The association also has ambitious plans to establish a resource center for comparative law — Islamic, national and international.

The women brought to New York a meticulous list of what their association needs, from chairs and kitchen items to a car and eight computers, in order to open a center in Kabul. All told, they say they need $237,600. It seems a lot to them.

Visibility is equally important, said Ms. Anwari, 26. "One of the purposes of our visit here — beside getting some financial and material support from outsiders — is to introduce the aims and the goals and the dreams of Afghan women lawyers to the international community," she said.

The women spoke at the offices of Equality Now, an organization that works on women's rights in more than 100 countries.

Afghanistan once had hundreds of women trained in law. For 57 years, before women were banned by the Taliban, Kabul University graduated coeducational law classes that included 20 to 40 women a year. But they were not active in political life and women's rights, she said.

"Most of them became teachers or housewives, because they weren't provided opportunity to continue with legal and professional work," she said.

Many also left the country during the last 23 years of war, she said, and they often thrived as lawyers in freer environments.

"It is our hope that when they come back — or even if they stay abroad — we will have their support," Ms. Anwari said.

Ms. Kabuli, 41, was among those who stayed and worked underground, and she is now a judge dealing with youthful offenders; girls as well as boys are often charged with robbery in these difficult economic times, she said. During Taliban rule, from 1996 until last fall, she ran one of hundreds of clandestine home schools for girls.

"One of the first violations of the Taliban against women was that they instantly got rid of the female judges," Ms. Kabuli said. "As a consequence of that, and because the schools were closed, I had a home school and taught up to 300 students in all grades, up to the 11th grade. The girls had to come one by one to school because if they came a group, they might have been arrested."

Ms. Kabuli said the problem with the Taliban was not that they were Muslims. "Islam brought a certain equality to men and women," she said. "The laws that the Taliban brought were from pre-Islamic times, based on traditional law."

Those traditions die hard, Ms. Paikan said.

*** Is there anything WE can do tho help them? I don't have $200,000, but I would write someone to let them know I'm aware of this and give my feelings.

Ellen in TX

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