{"id":10484,"date":"2019-01-23T15:13:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T13:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=10484"},"modified":"2019-01-23T15:13:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T13:13:44","slug":"ex-president-karzai-betrays-afghan-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2019\/01\/ex-president-karzai-betrays-afghan-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-President Karzai Betrays Afghan Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Margon<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The former President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai speaks at a panel discussion titled ‘Disrupting the Established Order’ at the TRT World Forum, themed ‘Envisioning Peace and Security in a Fragmented World’ at the Swiss Hotel The Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey on October 3, 2018.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u00a9 2018 Arif Hudaverdi Yaman\/Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

After former Afghan President Hamid Karzai finished his remarks at the\u00a02019 Raisina Dialogue<\/a>\u00a0in New Delhi, a voice from the back of the room asked the very question on my mind: \u201cHow will you ensure the role of females in this process is one that’s actionable?\u201d<\/p>\n

Karzai\u2019s response was clear:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think there will be a kind of a role for women in the process itself.\u2026 What is more important is that once peace is reached and there is a settlement…that we make sure that our movement to the future is equally strong with regards to the opportunities that the country should give to women, that we have given to women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karzai has no official role in ongoing talks in Afghanistan, in which there\u00a0have not yet been any direct meetings<\/a>\u00a0between the Taliban and the Afghan government. But he inserts himself regularly into Afghan politics and is an influential voice. So it was devastating to hear Karzai apparently support, in a public forum, the exclusion of women from the talks. His suggestion that progress was made on women\u2019s rights because his government \u201cgave\u201d it to them was also troubling.<\/p>\n

Notably, the next day he\u00a0issued a clarification<\/a>\u00a0asserting that: \u201cAfghan women must be part of the peace process, but more than that they must be benefitted by the outcomes of the peace process so that none of the freedoms they regained (post-Taliban) are lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afghan women\u2019s rights activists\u00a0have been fighting for years<\/a>\u00a0to secure equal participation in the future of their country. They\u2019ve made some progress against the toughest of odds, but much remains undone. Current President Ashraf Ghani\u2019s\u00a0negotiating team<\/a>\u00a0for the talks includes three women, but the Afghan government isn\u2019t even at the table yet. And the government, along with its international partners, have always been weak concerning women\u2019s role in peace talks.<\/p>\n

Women and girls in Afghanistan\u00a0continue to face extreme forms of violence<\/a>and discrimination. Two-thirds of adolescent girls are still not in school. Important legislation on violence against women \u2013 signed by Karzai himself \u2013\u00a0is still largely unenforced<\/a>. A growing proportion of civilian casualties in the conflict\u00a0are women and girls<\/a>. High-profile women and women in public life face harassment, threats, and even murder.<\/p>\n

Nearly 20 years ago, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 called for women\u2019s participation in all peace processes. Since the resolution\u2019s adoption in 2000, many governments\u00a0have begun to recognize that women\u2019s roles in peace processes are not negotiable add-ons<\/a>, but fundamental to sustainable and implementable peace accords.<\/p>\n

Karzai should understand this. His remarks, even after clarifying them, are a damaging betrayal of the role of women in future talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former President Downplays Role for Women in Talks with Taliban<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":10485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,12,48,17,49],"tags":[341,260],"class_list":["post-10484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-transitional-justice-and-peace","category-war-and-peace","category-women","category-womens-rights","tag-afghan-women","tag-afghanistan-peace-process","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10486,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10484\/revisions\/10486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}