Afghanistan

“Women's rights are human rights,” Hillary Clinton declared at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women in 1995. As President Barack Obama's “good war” in Afghanistan goes bad and negotiations with the Taliban increasingly seem likely, there has never been a greater need to recall these words.

Afghan women and girls fear they will pay the price for any deal to end the insurgency cut by President Hamid Karzai with the Taliban, a rights group said on Tuesday, pleading for safeguards of hard-won freedoms.

The United States on Monday confirmed media reports about Afghan President Hamid Karzai's moves to get 50 Taliban leaders from the al-Qaida Taliban sanctions list of the United Nations Security Council.

The U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley cautiously told journalists, “I would be careful about putting a particular number on this.”

Ongoing Taliban attacks on women in Afghanistan show why women's rights should be a priority in any political agreement with insurgent forces, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Sahadat Karimi walks to the stage, past the sofas where officials are seated, and retrieves a large colorful parcel from the hands of Herat's director of the Department of Women Affairs (DWA). She pauses, briefly smiles to the cameras, and returns to her seat. The ceremony lasted for just a few seconds but the religion teacher is proud to be acknowledged by her community.

A coalition of Afghan war crimes victims is lobbying against the Afghanistan Peace Jirga and the Afghanistan government's effort to begin a reconciliation process with the Taliban and other insurgents. The Afghanistan Peace Jirga, which took place early last week, brought together approximately 1,600 delegates from around Afghanistan to discuss building peace and the motives of insurgency groups.

Afghan women peace activists marked the 10th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325 by coming together to discuss and agree on a range of key issues for women and peace in Afghanistan.

Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues Melanne Verveer, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls Tina Tchen, Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Rosa Brooks, and Director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Task Force at USAID Jim Bever on June 9 participated in a State Department hosted roundtable discussion on Women in Afghanistan.

The first woman to run for president of Afghanistan, Moussada Jalal, told Canadians on Tuesday that engaging the Taliban in a bid to end an eight-year-old war would set back women's rights.

Peace talks with the Taliban is "bad news for women in Afghanistan," Jalal, a former minister of women's affairs, told reporters. "I hope it doesn't happen."

The head-to-toe burqas that made women a faceless symbol of the Taliban's violently repressive rule are no longer required here. But many Afghan women say they still feel voiceless eight years into a war-torn democracy, and they point to government plans to forge peace with the Taliban as a prime example.