Women's Rights In Afghanistan: Standing On The Precipice

The name Afghanistan is synonymous with conflict. This Central-Asian country of 31 million people is a geographical crossroads, sharing its borders with Iran, Russia, China, and Pakistan.  Sometimes referred to as the “graveyard of empires” this country has been invaded by the hordes of Genghis Kahn, the legions of Alexander the Great, the armies of Queen Victoria, and the tanks ofthe Soviets.  Each of these invaders were forced to leave by the hardy and tenacious tribal people that call Afghanistan home.  The United States and the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are the latest in this long line of occupiers to arrive with troops and big plans for development.  It remains to be seen if they will share the same fate as the countries that came before them; leaving Afghanistan without being able to meet the goals and aspirations they had when they invaded.   

 One of the goals set bythe International community after the US invasion was the empowerment and education of the Women of Afghanistan.   This minority group has suffered the most in this ongoing conflict that began with the Soviet Invasion in 1979.  Despite the media attention given tothe plight of women in Afghanistan and the continued efforts of a multitude of international organizations and governments, this political science student hypothesizes that women’s rights have not improved dramatically in the ten years since the US invasion and the fall of the Taliban Regime.  A great deal remains the same, most importantly in the areas of the right to education and reproductive rights.This paper will explore the reasons behind this state of affairs and what actions, if any, could be taken to improve the human rights conditions for Afghan women.

The years under the Taliban Regime were hard on the entire population of Afghanistan, but the human rights abuses against women perpetrated by the Taliban were especially heinous. Their first orders of business when they took control of the country in 1996 were to close all schools for girls, forbid women to work, and issue decrees requiring them to wear the full burqa (a garment that covers women headto toe).   These decrees destroyed what little freedom women in Afghanistan had left, and reduced them to a period of virtual slavery. The actions taken by the Taliban regime while it was in power created a dire situation that lingers even now, nearly a decade after they were forced from power.  The topics of reproductive health and the right to education are often discussed as separateissues, but in war-torn Afghanistan they are forever connected. This wasevident as early as 2004.  Due tothe Taliban’s five-year prohibition on education for women and girls and their edicts against women working outside the home, professional schools had not graduated any female doctors or nurses. A whole generation of educated high school girls, eligible to enter medical training, had been deprived of the opportunity.  (Riphenburg, 2004) While some improvement has been made since 2004 when there was a complete and utter lack of young newly trained female medical personnel, the continued shortage has greatly hindered Afghan progress. In a country where males are generally not allowed to perform gynecological procedures on women, this lack of female medical personnel meant that Afghan women are more often than not forced to give birthwithout any medical assistance.  If the Taliban left a legacy of their time in power, it is one filled with death,repression, and Islamic extremism. Their most resounding legacy is one thateven the most hardened extremist couldn’t have intended; by 2002, 1700 of every100,000 women in the rural areas of Afghanistan died in childbirth.  That means that in the first year after the fall of the Taliban, a rural Afghan woman was dying in childbirth every 30 minutes.  The toppling of this oppressive regime filled the majority of the Afghan people with a newfound hope.  However, their Euphoria would be short lived.  The promises made by both the American Government, the newly formed Afghan Government and the multitude of International Organizations that poured into the country after the fall of the Taliban would prove extremely hard to keep.  International efforts have stagnated in many areas: Security, Afghan Governmental transparency, anti-opium efforts and Human Rights.   The next part of this paper will examine the two main human rights issues faced by Afghan women, reproductive rights and the right to education. 

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