The Taliban has been overthrown, but violence and extortion still plague women, a new Amnesty International report says

Little has changed for Afghanistan’s women since the United States overthrew the Taliban regime more than three years ago. Women throughout the country are still at risk of abduction, rape, forced marriage and being traded as a commodity, a new Amnesty International report says.

“Throughout the country, few women are exempt from violence or safe from the threat of it,” the report, Afghanistan: Women Under Attack, states.

“A lot of women told us they had hoped things would change rapidly for the better after the overthrow of the Taliban, so there is a sense of disappointment,” Nazia Hussein, the report’s author, told Reuters.

Basing its report on interviews with Afghan women across the country, Amnesty concluded societal rules, both social and religious, are being used to justify the denial of rights to women.

Women who break the unwritten rules of Afghan society are sometimes killed or imprisoned.

The situation has improved for women in the cities, but remains virtually unchanged in the countryside, a spokeswoman for the country’s women’s affairs ministry told the Associated Press.

Amnesty’s report suggested there was little support in the government for changing the status quo. The report quoted the governor of Kandahar as saying last fall: “At the moment, there are more pressing issues … a civil servant has too much on his mind to deal with women’s rights. It is a matter of priorities.”

Some things, though, have undeniably changed for Afghan women. Some 350 women are running for office in the upcoming parliamentary elections, something that would have been unheard of during the Taliban’s reign.

MORE VICTIMS AND VIOLENCE

Amnesty International’s report on the status of Afghan women came the same day as violent flare-ups across the country. NATO peacekeepers sent in F-16 fighter jets to northeast Afghanistan to disperse thousands of protesters, supporters and opponents of a local government, who had clashed, leaving six wounded. In Kabul, a roadside bomb injured seven when it detonated, missing its target — a vehicle carrying NATO peacekeepers.

Dose
Tuesday, May 31, 2005