WOMEN-AFGHANISTAN: UN Commission Pushes for Action on Rights

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 1998 (IPS) - The United States is confident of support in its campaign against the violation of women’s rights in Afghanistan, which is now before a special U.N. commission on women’s concerns.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) opened a two-week session Monday to focus on violence against women, human rights and armed conflict and is expected to vote on the U.S. resolution next week. Already, sources say, the proposal to push for the enforcement of women’s rights in Afghanistan has attracted supporters without any open opposition.

“We believe the Commission must speak out when women and girls have lost their ability to be heard or to go to school, work or get medical care,” said Ambassador Linda Tarr-Whelan, the U.S. representative to the CSW. “Our draft resolution sends a message that no group has the right to deny women and girls their human rights.”

The U.S. resolution denounces Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, which controls more than two-thirds of the country, for “continuing violations of the human rights of women and girls” and asks all Afghan parties to protect basic rights and end discrimination.

The draft text also supports “aid programmes in Afghanistan which integrate gender concerns and actively attempt to promote the participation of both men and women.”

In recent months, the radical Islamist views of the Taliban have particularly drawn fire over the exclusion of Afghan women from most walks of life, including education and health services.

“It is an enormously controversial issue,” argued Joan Ruddock, British Minister for Women’s Affairs. As a result, she added, Britain will be working with the United States to push for a consensus resolution on Afghanistan.

U.N. officials are hoping for a clear international position on the deterioration of women’s rights in Afghanistan. Many U.N. agencies and governments have condemned Taliban edicts which effectively have blocked aid programmes directed at assisting women and girls, as well as a rigid interpretation of Islamic ‘purdah’ rules which keeps many women confined to their homes.

One particular problem is that, to help women, U.N. officials must be able to talk to them – but cannot do so in Taliban- controlled zones because of restrictions against hiring female interpreters, said Alfredo Witschi-Cestari, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, during a visit last week to Geneva.

“In Kabul (the capital) itself, it became a particularly challenging situation,” he added. Meeting with women there had been forbidden, and most women avoided international personnel because “they were afraid of the consequences,” Witschi-Cestari said.

Sensitive about its poor public image in the West, the Taliban has recently tried to downplay such reports of the repression and confinement of women in the movement’s zones of control.

Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, a Taliban representative recently named its ambassador-designate to Pakistan, has denied reports that women and girls are being denied health care and education, and contended that the movement allows female-only schools and hospitals to operate. Other Taliban officials argue that its record is no worse than that of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of Islamist and secular forces which continues to resist Taliban rule in several northern provinces.

“The whole thing is about the pipeline,” argued Laili Helms, a Taliban spokeswoman based in New York. “It has nothing to do with human rights or women’s rights.”

She added that Western governments “never made a peep when women were being killed” by the forces loyal to ousted President Berhanuddin Rabbani.

The politics of natural gas – and in particular plans to build a gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would connect Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the north to Pakistan in the south – has often played a role in the controversy over the Taliban’s treatment of women.

When the Islamist movement, heavily composed of ethnic Pathan fighters who had taken refuge in Pakistan, took power in Kabul in 1996, the United States initially downplayed concerns about its poor rights record. At that time, a U.S. company, Union Oil of California (or UNOCAL) was one of several firms competing for rights to construct a pipeline through Taliban-held parts of Afghanistan.

UNOCAL and Argentina’s Bridas firm are still pushing for the rights to build that pipeline, Helms said. But in the intervening two years, the Taliban’s policies – from ordering that women not reveal any flesh or hair when venturing outdoors to prohibiting even women doctors from working in conflict zones – has been so poor that Washington’s initially mild response has stiffened.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stiffly criticised the Taliban’s gender discrimination during a visit to its main regional ally, Pakistan, last year. The fact that Washington is behind the push for the CSW resolution is a further sign of the decline of the Islamists’ fortunes with U.S. officials.

There may be a difference between politics and economics on this issue, however: As Helms noted, several key Taliban officials – including its ministers for energy and industry – visited the United States just three months ago, to meet with UNOCAL executives and other officials.