Afghanistan

Afghanistan's government is considering taking over the running of women's shelters, subjecting victims of domestic abuse to medical examinations and near-incarceration under a proposal rights groups say is a concession to the Taliban.

Human rights has been a hot topic in Afghanistan since the Taliban's near-medieval treatment of Afghan girls and women became known. Now that Afghanistan is working toward a more modern society and government, the rights of the nation's female population are moving front and center for those in charge of NATO Training Mission Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan.

More than 4,000 incidents of violence against women have happened in nine months last year in Afghanistan, a senior official in Ministry of Women's Affairs said.

Officials in ministry of women's affairs strongly condemned stoning of a newly-wed couple in northern Kunduz province and rape incidents in western Herat province.

Ms. Khalida Alkozai and Ms. Wazhma Fazli are journalists and radio hosts for Kabul's Alam Round Table discussion, which brings together local leaders, politicians and even ISAF military leaders to share their views with Afghan citizens. The Alam radio program, which is broadcast in both Dari and Pashto, allows listeners the opportunity to hear often-opposing views of current events.

A repressive and violent rule by the Taliban and Mujahideen that pushed the country backward by decades and treated women like a commodity is now giving way to some norms of decency under a democratic rule. Surprisingly, hundreds of women contested the 2010 elections to Afghan parliament and now, 69 of 249 MPs are women.

They sit patiently in the lobby of the directorate of women's rights at the women's ministry, their sad, bruised faces testimony to the years of ill-treatment and beatings they have been forced to endure.

The Taliban's leadership is prepared to drop its ban on girls' schools, one of Afghanistan's most influential cabinet ministers has claimed.

According to Farooq Wardak, the country's education minister, the movement has decided to scrap the ban on female education that helped earn the movement worldwide infamy in the 1990s.

The daughter of an Afghan politician has reportedly died of her injuries after being raped by American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan's southwestern province of Farah.

In Block 08, an anonymous sand coloured building in Helmand's Police HQ, seven veiled figures play out each afternoon their very own drama of the No 1 Afghan Ladies Police Academy.

The women, aged from 18 to 33, are the first recipients of a new scholarship to train as female police officers. At present there are less than 20 serving female officers in the Afghan police in Helmand.

Women need to take their place alongside men to help build peace across the world, human rights activist Dr Sima Samar has said.

Last week Dr Samar won the 2010 Tipperary International Peace Prize and the judging panel said she risked her life to fight for the rights of women and girls in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.