There have been official celebrations and usual token statements on the international women’s day. A protest demonstration was held in Kabul demanding more rights for women.
A famous differently stated quote says a society is judged by the way it treats its women. Perfectly fit for Afghanistan, it not only shows the contradiction of women’s social status in our society with that of the moral hyperbole of their rights bestowed by religion that we are always lectured about by clerics, but also possibly an important factor of the violent conflict.
A recent study by an American professor Valerie M. Hudson shows best predictor of a state's stability is how its women are treated. According to the study, the very best predictor of a state's peacefulness is not its level of wealth, its level of democracy, or its ethno-religious identity; the best predictor of a state's peacefulness is how well its women are treated. What's more, democracies with higher levels of violence against women are as insecure and unstable as non-democracies.”
With the 2014 NATO withdrawal getting close and lack of donor interest and aid flow, women rights is no more an area of focus for the international community or media. The support has reduced to a significant level. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)announced in 2012 that it plans to spend $313 million to support the development of Afghan women over the next five years. The fear is growing that women’s rights will be first victim if turmoil follows the US and NATO withdrawal.
According to a recent paper, “promoting women’s rights in Afghanistan is often framed as a choice between committing to high levels of aid for gender-related activities and an uncompromising public stance vis-à-vis the Afghan authorities, or a realization that women’s rights are an internal issue where outsiders can achieve little. Attempting to “fast-track” Afghan women’s rights in isolation from local politics will fail. But neither is it correct to assume that Western actions can have no impact.”
Western “commitment should not be measured in aid volumes, but in strategic support based on knowledge of civil society and Afghan politics more broadly. Compared to the Taliban period and the years of turmoil that preceded it, the lives of many Afghan women have been drastically transformed since 2001. Commonly cited figures on education and health testify to this: from virtually zero during Taliban rule, 37% of school children are now girls, while maternal mortality has decreased by 22% since 2001.
Since the overthrow of the Taliban government, urban women have also regained much of the public visibility of earlier times, returning to work in government positions, teaching, business and aid organizations. Women’s participation in politics, aided by constitutional quotas for female representation in parliament and provincial councils, is another dramatic change.”