Afghanistan

We've all heard stories about how hard it is for girls and women in Afghanistan.

How hard it is to go to school. How hard it is to make their own choices and defy their families. How hard it is sometimes to even leave their houses.

An all-female delegation of women from Paktika Province convened for the first time April 25.

Influential female Afghan representatives, like the director of women's affairs for Paktika, attended.

“It is my responsibility to reach out and help the women and to let them know they have rights,” said Dr. Bibi Hawa, Paktika DoWA.

The penalties that Afghan women suffer whenever allegations of pre-marital sex and loss of virginity emerge, including death, are extreme, discriminatory and not in the penal code, activists said.

In Afghanistan's Herat province, the chief prosecutor general has a difficult job.

Fighting for justice against a profoundly corrupt political system is an uphill struggle, but for Maria Bashir the challenge is all the more acute.

It is a society that is still trying to shake off the worst excesses of the Taliban's patriarchal rule and being a woman in a position of power is not only rare, it is dangerous.

The president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society heard many questions about her country from Nova Scotia students this week.

The majority were about the future women face in Afghanistan, Fatima Gailani said Thursday.

Former first lady Laura Bush says women in Afghanistan are creating their own economic opportunities and that entrepreneurship will be highlighted at a conference this week at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.

Dozens of women in the war-torn Afghan capital took part in a march for peace ahead of the traditional new year, calling on the all parties to the conflict to ensure a violence-free year.

The march marked the launch of a three-day civil society peace campaign.

Decades of armed conflict, ongoing violence and high unemployment have left millions of men and women in Iraq struggling to make ends meet and care for their families. Basic services such as health care, the supply of clean drinking water and sanitation remain largely inaccessible outside large population centres. In many places, very little funding and few services are available to help needy people.

The March 6 news article "As U.S. goals shift, so does focus on aid to Afghanistan's women" suggested that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is shifting away from its commitment to gender equality and women's empowerment in Afghanistan. Nothing could be further from the truth.