The International community points to the advances women achieved in Afghanistan since 2001 as a significant development of the Karzai’s rule in the country. After the collapse of the Taliban, the new government came to an agreement with the support of the international community on fostering women’s rights and gender equality programs as one of the issues made under the Bonn Conference in 2001.This article will discuss firstly, the governmental institutions which are created with the help of the international community to ensure the implementation of women’s rights in the country, and secondly, the challenges toward women’s rights in the country such as inefficiency of governmental institutions and presence of tension between the informal institutions -tribal customs and religious norms - and the norms of the international community.
Women’s rights activists argue that conservative voices have grown louder inside and outside of the government to deteriorate women’s rights in the country. As the deadline for the international troops to withdraw gets nearer the tension between the conservatives and human rights supporters within and outside of the country are expressed more publicly. There is an assumption that international community’s attention such as the U.S. and the EU, as the main ones, who are funding Afghanistan for its reconstruction and promotion of human rights since 2001 will diminish once the U.S. troops will departure from the country. There is also a fear of losing the fundamental freedoms gained over the past years if the government uses women’s rights as a bargaining chip with the Taliban and other conservatives, weakening the potential to implement them as a whole.
In 2001, the new government of Afghanistan with the help of international community implemented governmental institutions to support women’s rights participation in public sphere. The constitution of Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban was written by the Loya Jirga (grand assembly) members who supported equal rights for men and women as well as equal rights to education and work for all citizens of Afghanistan regardless of their gender. Afghanistan also ratified several international human rights laws such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 2003 and the Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) in 2008. The establishment of new reforms and institutions on protection of women’s rights and promoting their participation in the public life through both domestic and international laws are significant achievement by the Karzai’s government. However, to enforce such laws in the practice remains challenging due to the complicated tribal social structure and ineffectiveness of governmental policies in the country. In order to ensure the representation of women in the process of decision making, the state improved its institutions in the Wolesi Jirga (lower house of the Parliament), Moshranu Jirga (upper house of the Parliament) and the provincial councils. Over 27 percent of Wolesi Jirga in 2012 was women, surpassing the global average of women’s representation in houses of parliament.In addition, women were one quarter of the members of the provincial councils since the July 2013 electoral law decreased them to one-fifth. The National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA) annual plans and activities, and ministries dedicate at least 30 percent of their budget to the improvement of women’s rights and the NAPWA is obliged to contribute the 30 percent representation of women for the civil service. Thus, the Afghan women as promised in the Bonn Agreement, were represented in the political life and also they could occupy a share of civil service.
However, this political representation does not guarantee full protection of women’s rights. Jennifer Heath and Ashraf Zahedi,question the actual significance of political representation of women in parliament of Afghanistan. The authors imply that there is a “politics of presence” rather than“politics of idea” in the parliament among women representatives. The effectiveness of women’s representation in the parliament remains fragile due to the lack of experience and education among female lawmakers and also increasing conservatism within the government as a whole. For example, in 2013 there were several attacks by the conservatives parliamentarians to women’s rights. One attack was the reduction of reserved provincial council seats to females, approved by the parliament of Afghanistan on July 15, 2013, sanctioned an electoral law amendment that reduced provincial council seats to women from 25 percent to 20 percent. This decision concerned the political representation of women which was marked as one of the improvements by the international community since 2001. Reducing provincial seats for women implied that as the conservative’s oppositions get bolder to express themselves the women rights get more attacked in different forms both within and outside of the governmental structure. The power of conservative’s views not only impacts the overall status of women in the society but also the women officials who act as decision makers.
Muhammad Moeen Marastial, a former member of parliament,justified this decision as reasonable. He said that “it is dependent on our society’s conditions, and for now it is hard for women to work and represent themselves. So because of the current situation the step taken by the parliament is right decision.”As implied by some of the supporters, the decision is based in problems like insecurity in some areas of the country that hinder women’s full participation in public sphere. However the law could encourage the emergence of male domination in those areas where there is a lack of women officials which might lead to a discrimination against women. Following this and some other decisions made by the Afghan parliamentarians in a regard to attacking women’s rights in recent months, the EU expressed its concerns: “as we told ministers in a recent letter, at this crucial time the EU and its member states need to make it absolutely clear that women’s rights area non-negotiable, core aspect of the EU's relationship with Afghanistan.”
Moreover, the conservative parliamentarians and governmental officials rolled back women’s rights by introducing the most recent law by the Afghan Ministry of Justice to hinder testimony of family members against each other in cases of domestic violence and forced marriage. On February 4, 2014, a provision was added by the Ministry of Justice to prohibit the victims of domestic violence including forced and child marriage to testify against their own relatives as a result it could diminish the chance of domestic violence victims to seek justice against their attackers.Strong oppositions raised by both national human rights activists and the international community as the law was passed by the parliament. Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch said “Afghanistan’s lower house is proposing to protect the batterers of women and girls from criminal punishment. Legislative approval of this criminal law revision would effectively stop prosecutions of people .who beat, forcibly marry, and even sell their female relatives.”
In addition, the EU condemned this draft of Afghan law and called it a “backward step” for Afghanistan’s woman. An article published on the Wall Street Journal by Margherita Stancati emphasized on Afghanistan’s western partners, the U.S. and the EU’s protest against the new legislation. In addition, the western countries threatened that how the failure to fight violence against women by the Afghan government could reduce the international aid that the country heavily depends on. For instance, on October 5, 2013, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway said that Norway would cut its aid in 2014 to Afghanistan in a reduction of almost seven percent due to a lack of preventative laws regarding violence against women. Therefore, to be committed to the protection of women’s rights in the country is a strategic decision by the Afghan government since underestimating the protection of women’s rights by the government leads to an immediate step back of financial support from western countries. Therefore, the pressures by the international community over the government are significantly influential. For instance, in the end, the western powers along with the civil society activists could pressure the president to intervene for the protection of women’s rights in February 18, 2014.The president rejected the domestic abuse law which was approved by both houses in the parliament and sent it back for revision after a campaign was held by Afghan activists and western diplomats. This shows that the president is under the pressure of the international community and cannot deny its reliance on its western allies and their financial support.
In another attempt, the Lower House of the Parliament attacked on the EVAW law (Elimination of Violence against Women). However, it was passed by the presidential decree following international pressures once again it came to the attention of the conservative MPs who opposed the EVAW as “un-Islamic” and against traditional values in a regard to its relation to criminalizing child marriage,forced marriage and “baad”, the traditional practice of exchanging girls to resolve the dispute by the Pashtun people under Pashtunwali principles.
Nasirullah Sadiqzada Neli, one of conservative lawmaker said to The Huffington Post, “ idea of protecting female rape victims from prosecution is against the custom which is common in Afghanistan and it would lead to a social chaos, with women freely engaging in extramarital sex safe in the knowledge they could claim rape if caught”. Some other conservatives MPs, referred to the rape provision’s law as “un-Islamic” calming that “adultery itself is a crime in Islam, whether it is by force or not.”As implied, the reason behind the tension between the EVAW is partly believed as promoting western values which infringed on customs such as “baad” and the religious values in an Afghan’s context.
Moreover, ulama are also opposing some of the EVAW law as un-Islamic. For example, the EVAW allows a woman to flee her home if she is under the abuse but under the Sharia’s interpretation of ulama it is a crime or Zina. Similarly, the ulema Council, an advisory board on Sharia, claimed in March 2012 that women were inferior to men and should not participate into the public sphere or interact with unrelated men.93 Surprisingly, President Karzai reportedly supported the council’s points of views on women in a conference saying“It represents the country’s Islamic viewpoint and all Muslims of Afghanistan are bound to respect it.”Thus,this implies that the president attempts to please the conservatives and also the tribal leaders by accepting their views. In addition, it assumed that the president needs to gain the trust of the Taliban as well by supporting conservatives’ norms and values which is why he is playing a double game. The history implies that traditional norms and the tribal rules were influential to limit the power of any domestic ruler or foreign superpower within the country. Therefore,this institution is extremely vital to the rulers of Afghanistan. As a result, Karzai should maintain the social harmony by reducing the support of radicals on the one hand and keeping the supports of western powers on the other.
In addition, the popularity of informal justice system strengthened under the Taliban–Shuras hinder the proper implementation of women’s rights protection and the laws in this regards such as the EVAW. In many cases, the decision made by there ligious or tribal leaders is not in line with the domestic or the EVAW law which are believed to be un-Islamic by the ulama or tribal leaders. These local councils have, in some cases, decided that a rape victim should marry her attacker, or that a woman who flees with unrelated man should be killed by her male relatives for dishonoring her family.Therefore, the role of customary judicial system governed by a mixture of Sharia and the Pashtunwali norms mostly in the rural areas still threaten the women’s rights protection and the proper implementation of national law. Indeed, the reasons people refer to the informal institutions to resolve their issues are rooted in the inefficiency of governmental institutions and alack of trust of the local people to the formal institutions. Therefore, the inefficiency of governmental institutions also plays a role in defining the present situation.
Moreover, the Taliban are still predominant in some areas of the country and they see the women’s rights as western values being imposed on Afghans which make them resistant to accept them. In an interview by the International Crisis Group,former Taliban commander Syed Muhammad Akbar says, “Foreigners have been using women’s rights as an ideological weapon.” As the U.S. troops prepare to leave the women’s rights opponents and conservatives express their view points on women’s rights more openly which despairs the women’s rights activists in the country. The old warlords, former mujahedeen play a double game regarding women’s rights. They do not challenge the political order and the international community backed policies as long as they need their support.To date, most of them have gained enormous political, economic and militia support thus they do not need to rely on the state and the international community but rather they are eager to gain the support of the conservatives and the tribal leaders which make them unsympathetic toward gender equality and women’s rights. While domestically the situation for women’s rights activists and their activities get more complicated the international community still presses the state to respect the gender equality laws and women’s rights.
After the collapse of the Taliban, under the Bonn Agreement, the interim government of Afghanistan had pledged on protecting women’s rights and promoting their participation in all spheres of the public life under the support of international community. The gender equality formally institutionalized through the constitution,the parliament and ratification of laws protecting the women’s rights the state welcomed the improvement of women’s rights and a more balanced-gender society.However, the strength of the informal institutions such as the informal justice system(shuras) and the presence of conservative’s leaders within and outside of the country and weak governmental capacity undermine the efforts for women’s rights’implementation of in the country. Afghanistan’s commitment to universal human rights values is vital for its western powers to back the country financially therefore the president should show his long term commitment to women’s rights in the country. However, growing conservative’s views inside and outside of the government threatens the fragile women’s rights situation in the country.Conservatives oppose gender quality laws and perceive it as a foreign ideology imposed by the western powers which is not in compliance with the tribal norms and Sharia. The president and other formal political institutions get trapped between the popularity of the conservative voices one hand and the pressure of the international community on the other. The presence of tension between the conservatives and internal /external women’s rights supporters makes the environment challenging for achieving sustainable improvements in the rights of women and girls in the country.
