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RIGHTS-AFGHANISTAN: Men Lay Ground Rules for Women Refugee Voters
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 5 (IPS) - ''We are trying our level best to educate Afghan women on the
election process. But their men seem determined to prevent
them from voting on election day,'' says electoral officer Shahla
Ghaffar Khan.
''Many women are also reluctant to register as voters because
they are forbidden by their husbands or male elders in their
families,'' adds Khan.
Khan was helping Afghan refugee women in this border city
register for Saturday's presidential election in Afghanistan in an
extended four-day registration drive in Pakistan.
According to the United Nations, Afghan refugees living in
Pakistan and Iran could make up a significant 10 percent of the
total vote for the presidential election.
Afghan refugees first fled to Pakistan in 1978, after a
communist government seized power in Kabul. The influx
mushroomed after the then Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan
in December 1979, growing to more than four million in the
1980s.
In the mid-1990s, the radical Islamist Taliban faction seized
control over southern Afghanistan and Kabul. Taliban offensives
in northern Afghanistan in the late 1990s sent hundreds of
thousands of new refugees into Pakistan and Iran and
displaced large numbers of people within Afghanistan.
According to the International Organisation of Migration (IOM)
the drive was extended to include Monday because of voter
''enthusiasm''. About 1,670 registration centres, which will also
serve as polling stations, have been set up in western Pakistan.
Stuart Poucher, regional head of the IOM, after the end of the
four-day registration campaign told reporters here that a total of
650,000 Afghan refugees had been enrolled against the
estimated 800,000.
On Sunday afternoon, Poucher had announced at a press
conference that 320,000 voters, of which 25 percent were
women, had been registered by the IOM.
Parveen Basheeri, who teaches at a local school here,
however, paints a different picture.
''Many of the Afghan women here, though they have registered
with the IOM, still don't really know what the election is all about -
let alone knowing how to cast their ballot,'' she tells IPS.
She accuses the male-dominated political parties of the
presidential candidates of ignoring Afghan women voters in
Pakistan. ''It is the responsibility of the people tasked with the
election campaign to impart the know-how to people regarding
the casting of ballots but they've failed.''
''Even (President) Hamid Karzai, who she said was
immensely popular among the refugees living in Peshawar, had
no voter education programmes for women,'' reveals Basheeri.
U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai is widely expected
to defeat 17 challengers for a five-year term as the country's first
popularly elected leader.
A recent survey by the Asia Foundation, a U.S.-based
development agency, found that 87 percent of Afghans said that
women would need to get permission from their husband or the
head of the family to vote.
Eighteen percent of men surveyed said they would not let their
wives vote at all, and in the south of Afghanistan, almost one out
of every four men surveyed felt this way.
One women's rights activist told Asia Foundation: ''Only a few
women will be able to exercise their own choice, the educated
ones. (Most women say) we should obey our husbands, and if
we go against them, it will be a sin.''
Another election worker, quoted in the report, said she knew
women who would not be able to vote because their families will
not allow them. She said: ''Some of the women said to the
(election) workers, 'you gave us cards, but we are not sure if our
families will let us go'.''
According to Human Rights Watch an important sign of
progress for Afghanistan has been the large numbers of women
registered to vote in many parts of the country.
But the U.S.-based human rights group warned in a report
released Tuesday that widespread intimidation of women and
general insecurity threaten women's right to vote freely in the Oct.
9 presidential elections, stand for political office and fully
participate in public life.
The 39-page report, 'Between Hope and Fear: Intimidation and
Threats Against Women in Public Life in Afghanistan,' details
how warlord factions, the Taliban and various insurgent groups
attack and harass women government officials, election
workers, journalists and women's rights activists.
A pervasive atmosphere of fear persists for women involved in
politics and women's rights in Afghanistan, despite significant
improvements in women's lives since the fall of the Taliban in
late 2001, said Human Rights Watch in a statement.
A women's rights activist threatened in a northern province told
Human Rights Watch: ''They called me on my mobile, saying,
'You are doing things you should not. We will kill you as an
example to other women'.''
''Many Afghan women risk their safety if they participate in
public life,'' said LaShawn R. Jefferson, executive director of the
Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch in the
statement.
''Since the ousting of the Taliban, women's lives in Afghanistan
have undoubtedly improved,'' said Jefferson. ''But now it's the
warlords who are actively trying to keep women from exercising
their rights.''
Baseera, a 25-year-old Afghan refugee woman in Kacha Garhi
camp near here tells IPS she wants to vote, though she thinks
her ballot would make little difference in the larger scheme of
things in her homeland.
Like many Afghan refugees in Pakistan, she is a Pashtun and
can relate to presidential favourite Karzai - who is also from the
same tribe.
'' We do not know any other candidate except Hamid Karzai.
He is the only ray of hope for the war-battered Afghans. Only, he
can restore the much-awaited peace and tranquillity back home
in Afghanistan,'' says Baseera. (END/2004)
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