Afghanistan: Still a Man’s World? - Human Rights Watch

On Feb. 3 dozens of, Afghan women’s rights activists took to the streets of Kabul, marching to the ministry of women’s affairs to protest their new president, Ashraf Ghani, and chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, over their broken promises to appoint four women to the new cabinet. The protest demonstrates how determined these activists are — walking through the cold, wintery streets — to hold on to the rights they’ve laid their lives on the line for. It also highlights how worried they are that this new government will idly stand by as women are excluded from the political process and these hard fought rights — education, healthcare, employment, and political participation — are rolled back.

Ghani has said many of the right things on women’s rights. On the campaign trail, he said: “I consider women’s participation in all spheres of life absolutely essential. We must get enforcement of women’s rights.” As a candidate, Ghani made specific promises on women’s rights, including the promise to appoint four women to the cabinet and a woman to the Supreme Court. Now as president, his agenda prioritizes economic development, and he regularly speaks eloquently about the importance of women’s economic participation.

Both he and Abdullah, his partner in Afghanistan’s coalition government, during campaign season signed a petition prepared by a network of women’s rights groups endorsing demands that included appointing women to 25 percent of key government posts in the cabinet, local government, ministries, embassies, and international missions as well as judicial and legal positions, and making the civil service 30 percent female.

In return for these promises, some prominent women’s rights activists openly and strongly supported Ghani’s candidacy. Others watched from the sidelines but allowed themselves to hope that under Ghani, a Western-educated former World Bank official, Afghanistan’s women’s rights movement could find greater support than under his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, who occasionally undermined women’s rights.  Read More at  Heather Barr
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