Gains made on women's issues in the last 10 years in Afghanistan are under serious threat, an aid agency said Monday, in a report asking international allies in the war-torn country not to abandon Afghan women "in a quick fix deal for peace", dpa reported.
"The improvements for Afghan women's rights gained over the last decade are at risk of slipping away and could be lost in a quick fix bargain for peace," the international aid agency Oxfam said in a new report, A Place at the Table: Safeguarding women's rights in Afghanistan.
The Taliban rule from 1996-2001 was marked by general repression that was particularly brutal to women. Since the US-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban regime, Afghan women have remained the clearest beneficiaries with achievements reached on many issues related to women's rights.
The Oxfam report found that there "already has been a downward slide in the advances" women have made, the statement said.
Some 2.7 million girls are in school, compared to only a few thousand during Taliban rule, while other areas have shown patchy progress, Oxfam said.
"In parliament, a quota system put into place in 2005 guarantees 68 female MPs - there are now 69. However, there is now just one female minister, compared to three in 2004," the report said.
"The number of women in the civil service has dropped from 31 per cent in 2006 to 18.5 per cent in 2010."
Many Afghan female civil servants have been targeted by Taliban insurgents in recent months, discouraging families to send their daughters and wives to work for the government.
Oxfam said the Afghan government's ground-breaking Elimination of Violence Against Women law - which criminalizes harmful traditional practices such as honour killings, child marriages and giving away girls to settle disputes - was being enforced in only 10 out 34 provinces.
Religious leaders and community elders sometimes reinforced the customs by invoking their interpretation of Islam, a United Nations report found in December.
Afghan women could face a dangerous future after 2014 if sidelined in the search for peace, Orzala Ashraf Nemat, one of the two co-authors of the Oxfam report, said in a statement.
The United States and NATO allies have announced they are going to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghan forces and leave combat operations by 2014. Many doubt the capability of Afghan institutions, including the security forces, to hold and fight off the insurgency.
The Oxfam report said women's rights are at risk of falling further down the political agenda and could easily be ignored.
"Already life is getting tougher for Afghan women. Afghan women want peace - not a stitch up deal that will confine us to our homes again," Nemat said. "We are a voice that must be heard."
Oxfam said world leaders should ensure that Afghan women play an active role in any future negotiations or political settlement with the insurgents, explicitly guaranteeing women's rights.
"Afghan women tell me that they do not feel that they can count on any of the main players in peace efforts to safeguard their rights," said Louise Hancock, Oxfam policy advisor in Afghanistan and co-author of the report.
"They want a place at the table so that they can protect their hard-won gains."
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