Afghanistan: Women’s Rights

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, for raising this important issue. There are few in Parliament who know more about the subject, and we welcome her and her considerable expertise to the House. I also take this opportunity to salute the Foreign Secretary, the International Development Secretary and my noble friend Lady Warsi for the time, effort and focus they have all put into this very challenging problem. With the imminent departure of United States and UK combat troops from Afghanistan, and the election of a new president and provincial councils scheduled for next year, we are all too well aware that the country stands at a crossroads.

Many women’s rights around the world are still far away from where they should be in the 21st century: 70% of people living in poverty are women and a third of all women in the world experience some form of violence. However, it is Afghanistan which, despite many efforts by many people in recent years, remains the most dangerous place in the world for a woman to live.

One Afghan woman e-mailed me to say how grateful Afghans are that we, as a country, have been generous to them over the last 12 years, providing assistance in many ways, reaching out to women and promoting their cause. As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, we have to do all we can to ensure that this support is not wasted. I hope that this debate will be reported in Afghanistan and that women there will know that we are on their side, and that we support and are concerned for the women there who fear for the fragile rights that they have gained.

As my noble friend pointed out in her powerful and well argued speech, there are a number of signs of appeasement of Taliban and other conservative forces by the Afghan Government. Last year President Karzai supported a new code of conduct, issued by a group of prominent clerics, which permitted the beating of wives by husbands and the segregation of men and women in offices and schools. As both my noble friends have said, there has been progress and this should be celebrated. However, this progress is at risk. As human and women’s rights activist Wazhma Frogh comments:

“After 12 years of struggle and sacrifice we are handing over the fate of Afghan women into the hands of … guys who are ready to take away every right from women”.

One new NGO, the focus of which has been on assisting women in Afghanistan to make a contribution, is Future Brilliance, of which I am proud to be a trustee. Its vision is to create stability in fragile states by offering world-class training that contributes to the nation’s prosperity through the skills, ambition, professional knowledge and participation of its people. One person whom the charity has helped is Khala Zada. It took her two months to persuade her sons to let her come to Jaipur to be trained. A 50 year-old illiterate widow from rural Afghanistan, Zada runs a small business making jewellery by hand. The six-month course would teach her about design, techniques and sales but, as a woman coming from a country of gender inequality, she was not allowed to make the decision herself. She had to get permission from the men in her life—her adult sons. Finally, in January this year, she left her home accompanied by one of her sons and his wife to enrol alongside 35 other Afghan men and women—the ratio was two men to one woman—at the Indian Institute of Gems and Jewellery in Sitapura, Jaipur’s new jewellery quarter. The institute had hoped for more women than men, but it proved difficult for the women to get permission to travel for the training.

Zada is a pioneer in this new scheme to create a network of skilled Afghan artisans who will set up businesses and spread their knowledge. The advantage is that women jewellery-makers will be able to work from home—a key benefit should the Taliban return to power once UN peacekeeping forces pull out. She will be able to expand her business and employ more women so, in terms of maximum return on capital employed, taking just this one woman and investing in her personally is potentially huge for the economy of her local village.

Future Brilliance has recently forged an agreement with Afghanistan’s Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs to distribute 7,000 tablets to young entrepreneurs and students at training and vocational colleges throughout Afghanistan by 2014, customised for use in Dari and Pashto and loaded with education, social media, and m-commerce applications—there is lots of very exciting potential in that.

As my noble friend has said, education is the silver bullet. Education for all children, but especially for girls, is the key to continued progress. In 2001 there were fewer than a million students in school, and practically none of them were girls. Today, if you were in Kabul, you would happily see girls travelling to school in their black uniforms and white headscarves. There are now more than 8 million children attending 4,000 schools across Afghanistan and nearly 40% of these are girls. This is a fantastic improvement. As Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, has said:

“These girls who are in school today are the future of Afghanistan”.

When influenced early enough, boys and girls can grow up to be accepting of one another and to resist regressive tendencies. By educating boys and girls together in an equal environment, ensuring that they have access to the same knowledge and opportunities, the first step is taken to eliminating entrenched sexism.

I am proud that the UK has committed to supporting girls’ education in Afghanistan by giving £47 million to the DfID Girls Education Challenge fund to help 250,000 girls to access quality schooling. We have a responsibility to help these girls to reach their full potential. We also have a responsibility to ensure that boys fully comprehend the value of women and understand that appreciating and valuing women does not distract from, or in any way decrease the value of, men.

Many women in Afghanistan today are putting their lives and those of their families at risk by fighting for the rights of women. Shaima Alkozai secretly taught girls in her home during the fear and repression of Taliban rule. Her students would pretend that they were going to a friend’s house and hide their books in flour containers. Today she is the deputy principal of Zarghona Girls High School in Kabul, responsible for the education of more than 8,000 girls. As she says:

“An uneducated person is blind. They don’t know how to live their life. It’s especially important for women, because they are responsible for their life and the lives of their children and family. The life of the nation is in the woman’s hands”.

She also voices her concerns about the future of Afghanistan under the Taliban:

“What will be the future for women? Will their situation improve or become worse? It doesn’t matter to us if we have to wear a burka or not. But we want to continue with education”.

Ease of movement for women is a key problem that also needs tackling. In public transport, women have to wait until the men get into the vehicles, there are hardly any public bathrooms for women and it is not safe for them to walk around and be out after the sunset. There are many obstacles in their way, physically and psychologically—unimaginable for any of us in this Room today.

Last week I e-mailed a contact in Kabul to ask what changes she thought would best enable progress on women’s rights in Afghanistan. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, she came back with a rather extensive list. Beyond education, which was at the top of her list, she would like to see a distinct subject of human rights included in the school curriculum and taught in all schools, mandated by the Afghan Ministry of Education. She wants the Government to require all employers to display posters on rights and respect for women. She says that the Afghan public should be exposed to effective and brief TV and radio skits and slogans demonstrating why it is important to honour women as equals. The media in Afghanistan should be used extensively to reinforce the vital role that women play in society.

Historically, women are the first to suffer in a fragile state. Without proper planning, traditionalists will gradually erode the progress that has been made at the expense of so many lives. If we are to continue to make changes or even just preserve the status quo, women’s rights must be at the centre of negotiations with the Taliban. It is only by fully integrating women into the Government’s agenda that we can protect their fragile gains. As Kofi Annan said:

“There cannot be true peace and recovery in Afghanistan without a restoration of the rights of women”.

There must be increased access to justice, including reparations, and access to comprehensive services for all women to ensure that they are enabled to fully participate in the democratic process. As with all long-lasting and sustainable change, this cannot be imposed by the West. It must come from the Afghan people. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.