Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Coin Societal Development with Women’s Empowerment

Women constitute half of Afghan population. They can play foundational role in formation and development of the society and upcoming generation. They owe equivalent vigor to outstand and undertake the societal undertakings appropriately. Regretfully, they are deemed and treated as second class citizen; meant to plague their innate capabilities rendering them dysfunctional. If properly educated and socialized they can be turned into valuable human resource earning enormous riches for poverty stricken country. If shun in constant denial they will degenerate without productive contribution. The role of women during election campaigning remained confidential despite reasonless restraints and societal pressure. Confronting countless barriers women dispensed 34 percent vote was commendable.

Women in Afghanistan are frequent object of repression and endless violence. The graph of violence in Afghanistan such as domestic violence, honor killing, and sexual violence against women and young girls is escalating uninterrupted. Every alternate day endless tales of butcheries, physical torture, harassment and sexual assaults are surfaced where women render prey to flawed cultural practices, biased if not blind laws and sharia doctrines.

Violence against women in Afghanistan has kept them far away from education, one of the reasons that usually subjected them to extensive discriminations hence kept ignorant of their fundamental rights. The choices of Afghan women are extraordinarily restricted; the family decides their fate. There is little chance for education, little choice whom she marries no choice at all about her role in her own house. Her principal undertaking is to serve her husband's family.

As long as women and girls in Afghanistan are subject to violence with impunity, little meaningful and sustainable progress for women’s rights can be achieved in the country. Ensuring rights for Afghan women, such as their participation in public life, including in the peace and reconciliation process and equal opportunities in education and employment, requires not only legal safeguards on paper, but critically, speedy and full enforcement of the EVAW law.

Formerly the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General, JánKubiš, highlighted the importance of continued meaningful engagement and inclusion of women in Afghanistan’s political processes. "Through such action women’s voices and concerns can help improve the country’s political life,” said Mr. Kubiš, who is also head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). "Women's participation in national decision-making not only strengthens the representative nature of government institutions but is central to improved development and economic indicators." Unanimously pragmatic steps must be taken by incoming premier to avert the fate of women in the country.

The role of women in peace, reconciliation, rehabilitation and nation building must not be repudiated. They must be heard by granting maximum if not equal opportunities in societal making. The upcoming government keeping his promise should take bold and immediate measures undoing all such developments eroding and restraining the capabilities of women to work for the good of society provided empowered women can effectively contribute in the development of the country.