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Statement by a group of Afghan Women on the occasion of International Women's Day

Peshawar, Afghanistan

To mark the first International Women's Day in the twenty first century we would like to bring the attention of our sisters and brothers around the world to the plight of a particular group of Afghan women and to request their support in dealing with the situation these women face.

A woman in Afghanistan today faces a situation created by more than twenty years of warfare and interfactional strife, during which warring factions have continuously manipulated and abused her identity and violated her basic rights. She may have lost her husband or children to war-related violence, land mines or disease. She may be trying to find ways to deal with the impact of three years of the worst drought in thirty years. She may be struggling to survive on the margins of an economic system which has largely collapsed and supports a few powerful groups. She may already be affected by decreasing international assistance. She and her family may live in an area where they can no longer grow food, have no money left to buy food or have exchanged all their assets for food.

She may die in childbirth, a victim in a country with the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world. She may have already watched one of her four children die before the age of five. As an educated woman possibilities for work are minuscule inside Afghanistan. Her daughters may have little or no access to any form of schooling so they cannot write their names or read a street sign. She can feel insecure in any and every part of Afghanistan as her rights as a woman are universally ignored. Afghanistan has one of the worst human rights situations in the world.

She may be one of 60,000 displaced around Herat City, or one of 23,000 displaced between Tajikistan and Takhar Province or one of countless displaced in Kabul, Mazar-I Sharif, Bamian or Panjshir. She may be one of the 175,000 refugees who have crossed into Pakistan since September 2000 or one of 2.6 million refugees in Pakistan, Iran or Tajikistan. She may watch her country through the media abroad, part of the international 'brain drain' which has siphoned off Afghan doctors, teachers and intellectuals. Or she may be one of the unfortunate 56,000 people (41% female, 15% children between the ages of one and five, 4% infants under the age of one) who are currently in 'transit' in Jalozai.

There she is living under a sheet of plastic blown about by the wind, on a plain which floods when it rains, in appallingly overcrowded conditions. She has seen no food assistance and has to worry about food for herself and her children from one meal to the next. She has access to a small amount of water. She has to use one very basic latrine with another fifty families. She may not have washed her body or her clothes for over one month. Along with her children and husband, she may already be suffering from scabies, dysentery, diarrhea, or chest infections. She has nowhere to take care of her feminine hygiene and she may be suffering from any number of gynecological problems. She has access to four doctors serving a population of 56,000 for a few hours a day. She cannot move very far from her plastic sheet because she might get lost in the sea of sheets and she has nowhere to go anyway. Her children have no access to education. And in this situation she has to convince herself that she is a human being.

It is not that there is no assistance for her. Many agencies are poised to help her and her family. She is the victim of high-level legal and political negotiations, which know her and her family as dehumanized statistics. On International Women's Day when we should be celebrating together as Afghan women we can visit her in Jalozai and deplore her miserable conditions but we can extend no official assistance to her and her family because her status is undecided and she has not been granted the label 'refugee.'

We call upon the international community, especially our Afghan and Muslim sisters and brothers abroad to take note of the families stuck in Jalozai camp and to pressure governments involved to seek a speedy solution to the dilemma faced by these 56,000 human beings. We urge the Government of Pakistan to decide the fate of this group of vulnerable people as soon as possible, to move them to a suitable location and to register them if necessary using recognized criteria of international law. We demand that the UNHCR and other international assistance agencies be permitted to provide these people with:

a) Proper tents and blankets
b) Food rations
c) Adequate water and sanitation facilities
d) More clinics and medical personnel
e) Educational facilities for boys and girls

This statement was drafted by a group of professional Afghan women who meet regularly in Peshawar.