07 November 2003
Afghanistan's Draft Constitution Promotes Women's Rights
Afghan, U.S. Women Leaders Discuss Draft via Satellite
By Stephen Kaufman
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Afghanistan's new draft constitution, due to be discussed and voted on during a special Loya Jirga assembly in December, contains provisions aimed at protecting and promoting women's rights, according to Afghan Minister for Women's Affairs Habiba Sorabi.
Speaking from Kabul during a November 3 videoconference that brought together Afghan and American women leaders, Sorabi said the draft constitution includes three articles specifically promoting women's education and political participation.
Sorabi said that according to one article of the draft document, the Afghan government would be required to actively promote women's education and eliminate illiteracy.
Two additional articles set quotas to ensure women's representation in government. Each province will be required to send a woman representative to the Loya Jirga, and the president, who is allowed to select one third of the Afghan senate, will be required to appoint women to half of those positions.
Sorabi described the draft measures as "a good gesture for democracy and a very good result for the government of Afghanistan."
"These three articles really assist us in the political role of women in Afghanistan," said Minister Sorabi. She expressed her happiness that after suffering oppression and rights violations, especially under the Taliban regime, "we women can have our position in the society, and our people in Afghanistan can be under one constitution."
One of the other Afghan women participants said that the constitution ensures "no prejudice in gender related matters," and that it would outlaw some of the negative traditional practices against women.
However, Masooda Jalal, a former presidential candidate, expressed her opinion that after reading the details of the draft constitution's penal and civil laws, the document "looked more political than legal." She said she was not sure whether the constitution "was serving fundamentalism or liberalism," but would wait to see what the Loya Jirga discussions produce in December before making a decision.
On the question of education, Minister Sorabi pointed out that after years of being denied the right to go to school under the Taliban regime, girls now account for 1 million out of a total of 4 million Afghan students. She said the Afghan government was committed to expanding and developing this progress.
Former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift said she was pleased by the Afghan government's commitment to girls' education, which she said is critical to enable them to compete in any society.
"Making sure that all girls receive a high quality education, I think, is one of the critical elements for greater, broader and emerging women's leadership here in the United States," said Swift.
Congresswoman Judy Biggert, a Republican from Illinois, said she hoped the number of Afghan girls in school would increase and suggested implementing a system similar to that in the United States, in which truant officers are employed to enforce U.S. laws requiring all children between the ages of 5 and 16 to attend school.
One of the Afghan participants who teaches at the university level asked her American interlocutors to support Afghan efforts to build more higher education facilities and asked that more scholarships be offered to professors -- both women and men -- so that they could come to the United States to learn new technologies for the classroom.
Asked about her 2002 candidacy for the Afghan presidency, Masooda Jalal said her campaign for the highest office in the country "broke a traditional barrier" for women and said she planned to run again. She said many Afghans of both sexes had not only "accepted the phenomenon" of having women run for public office, but had also reacted positively to her presidential candidacy.
"Winning and losing for me is not that important," she said. "I want to enlighten my people to this practice for raising their awareness in terms of their political rights."
Congresswoman Juanita Millendar-McDonald, a Democrat from California, praised Jalal, saying that "it took a lot of sheer guts" to run for president and that she had "already empowered [Afghan] women by taking that step."
The congresswoman said more women should be encouraged to run for office, including at the local level. With women constituting half of the world's population, "we have our rightful spot," said Millendar-McDonald.
The videoconference, moderated by Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, gave Afghan and American women leaders an opportunity to discuss issues confronting women in public office. The American congressional participants, Representatives Biggert and Millendar-McDonald, are co-chairs of the congressional women's caucus, a bipartisan group of public officials who collectively work on behalf of women's issues in the United States.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
This page printed from: http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=November&x=20031107183559namruaks7.426089e-02&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
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