Holding back women will hold back Afghanistan

Last week, David Cameron declared Afghanistan as “mission accomplished”. Whilst we should be very proud of what British Service Personnel have achieved, it’s also clear – as Vernon Coaker commented – that Cameron’s comments were premature and rash, seemingly oblivious to the ongoing complex and critical work still to be done, and the progress that remains to be made.

Nowhere are the continuing challenges perhaps more evident than with women’s rights in Afghanistan. Indeed, given the daily threat of violence and the plague of inequality faced by Afghan women every day, it may well feel to them like the mission is yet to start.

Less than one month ago, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported over 4,000 incidences of violence against women were recorded in the first half of this year, including maiming and amputation of body parts, acid attacks, kickings, beating with a wire, pulling out of hair, burning, rape, forced prostitution and forced abortion.

And with an issue like this – often dogged in collusive silence – it is possible this figure presents a gross underestimation. Oxfam recently reported that as many as 87% of Afghan women suffer physical, sexual or psychological abuse at least once in their lives; half will be abused multiple times. These statistics constitute near universal levels of violence – a pandemic, today, in Afghanistan.

The country also has the highest proportion of what Amartya Sen termed ‘missing women’. These are women who, as a direct result of fundamental, seemingly ineradicable, structures of inequality, simply do not exist – either because families are so convinced of the subordinate value of girls to boys that they practice female foeticide or infanticide; or they deprive their daughters of food and delay their access to health care; or because those girls who do survive childhood become subject to servitude, neglect and violence – resulting in premature death.

Women’s rights have made some progress over the past decade in Afghanistan; for example of the seven million children attending school in 2011, 2.4 million were girls – nearly a third – compared to the near zero levels witnessed under Taliban rule. And 28% of seats in the lower house and 27% in the upper house of the Afghan parliament are now held by women – following the implementation of representative quotas.

But progress is nowhere near complete, and 2014 presents many critical junctures for Afghanistan, including the presidential elections in April and the removal of coalition forces by the end of the year. The involvement of women in both of these operations is critical to the long-term stability of the region, and yet their presence remains beleaguered by tokenism, opposition and violence.

Just nine members of the 70 member High Peace Council in Afghanistan (the panel responsible for negotiating for peace with the Taliban) are women. And the United States Institute of Peace warns of women’s rights and security being used as a bargaining chip in “reconciliation efforts with the Taliban”. Indeed, the parliamentary quota that boosted female participation in politics has recently been downgraded from 25% to 20% – amidst suggestions that this was negotiated as part of the peace talks.

Those women who do enter politics face an increasingly vulnerable future. Given the murder of Hanifa Safi, and her successor Najia Sediqi, last year, and the weekly death threats suffered by other female politicians, it is understandable that many women are intimidated out of standing for election. This, combined with the country’s endemic gender prejudice, has resulted in women’s near total exclusion from Afghanistan’s upper strata of power; of the eleven presidential candidates selected last month, not one is female.

Perhaps more worrying than the make-up of elite politicians, however, is the gender composition of the mainstream electorate and women’s empowerment to vote. Here, too, Afghanistan faces grim difficulties. Two-thirds of registered voters are male, and the proportion of registered female voters who will exercise their vote on April 5^th is likely to be affected by growing insecurity and daily attacks. The election commission recently determined that of the 6,845 polling stations across the country, half face “notable” security concerns due to a shortage of female security officers.

These issues aren’t just a sign that the mission is yet to be completed; they’re an indication of fundamental obstacles to its future realisation too.

Whilst gender equality was never the primary goal of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, women’s role in achieving “improvements in governance and socio-economic development in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability” (one of three ISAF mission goals) is clear. Moreover, these evident failings should constitute cause for sober reflection in a Government that claims ending violence against women is “at the heart of their work”.

2014 presents two significant opportunities to set the future debate in Afghanistan; women’s continued subjugation in both is a clear indication that much more must be done, not just to secure the future physical and psychological integrity of Afghan women, but also the future stability of this entire nation.

Holding back women doesn’t just hold back gender equality. It holds back individuals, families, and whole communities.

It holds back Afghanistan.

Gavin Shuker is the Shadow Minister for International Development with specific responsibility for ending violence against women and girls