Afghanistan

By CAROLINE BROTHERS

Afghan women walk past a guesthouse damaged a day after the suicide attacks in Kabul, 27 Feb. 2010

More Afghan women are choosing suicide to escape the violence and brutality of their daily lives, says a new human-rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department.

The 2008 annual assessment paints a grim picture of a country where violence against women and girls is common, despite rising public awareness among Afghans and international condemnation.

Dozens of Afghan women protested against the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IECA) on October 7 for allegedly allocating less seats for women on the country's provincial councils, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reported.

Activists at the rally, which was organized by civil society organizations in Kabul, demanded a greater role for women on Afghanistan's provincial councils.

Pink wigged-protesters and hundreds of other demonstrators wielding posters calling for peace converged on Copley Square in an antiwar rally yesterday.

The regional gathering in Boston - one of more than 40 nationwide - brought protesters from throughout New England to shout, sing, and march against conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants.

"The Iranian women's movement is not simply demanding equal rights alone. It is demanding a larger universal reality, which is democracy." - Shirin Ebadi, October 9, 2009

Through a courtyard piled high with heaps of trash and teeming with flies, two sturdy women sit in a cool, dark room before a group of nearly a dozen women who range in age from 15 to 50. The two are midwives who have come to talk to the women living here with limited electricity and little clean water about the importance of maternal health.

As the world waits for President Barack Obama to announce next week his plan to send up to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, three female leaders of civil society efforts focused their concerns on nation building.

The trio wanted to talk about something else: the country's recovery.

Rape in Afghanistan is under-reported, concealed and a human rights problem of "profound proportions", the United Nations said on Monday.

Norah Niland, the United Nations' human rights representative in Afghanistan, said field research conducted late last year and early this year found rape affected all parts of Afghanistan, across all communities and social groups.