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THE ROLE OF AFGHANISTAN WOMEN IN POLICE
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| THE ROLE OF AFGHANISTAN WOMEN IN POLICE
Manizha Paktin (Afghanistan) GazKasaUnivercity The 2014 presidential and provincial elections will be a key test for the people of Afghanistan. There is evidence that attitudes are beginning to change in some places. We also support smaller programs including a project collecting data on threats to female electoral involvement to help tackle issues affecting women voters and candidates. Work with selected mullahs and traditional leaders has led to wider encouragement of women to participate in elections and politics, and political programs have helped improve female capacity to participate in elections across the country – whether as individual candidates or in political parties. This work will not stop as soon as the elections finish. Instead, female councilors will continue to receive training and support throughout their first years in office. Under the Taliban, the position of women in Afghanistan was among the worst in the world. Changing this situation is a long-term task, in which improving girls’ education, increasing economic opportunities and women’s representation are key. These have rightly been the focus of the UK’s women’s rights political and development agendas in Afghanistan to enable women to lift themselves out of poverty and play their equal role in society. Although there remain many challenges, such as deeply-embedded traditional conservative value and culture, low literacy rates and domestic violence, there has been immense progress over the last twelve years: over two million girls now attend school (40% of those who regularly attend school are girls), compared to almost zero under the Taliban, 15% of university lecturers are female, and there are proportionally more women in parliament in Afghanistan (27% of seats) than in either the UK or the US. Whilst some barriers for women have been removed, a myriad of social factors continue to prevent women from fully engaging in society, and ongoing international support for Afghan women is still needed. For example, there was debate over the Eliminating Violence Against Women Law in Parliament in 2013, with some conservative groups vocally objecting to attempts to strengthen existing legislation. The Speaker closed the debate early, and the Presidential Decree remains in place as originally drafted in 2009. Similarly, the new Electoral Law reduced the number of seats allocated for women in provincial councils from 25% to 20%. However, the 25% quota remains in place for parliamentary representation. At present, less than 1% of the country’s police officers are women; joining the police has not been an attractive option for women as it is not a safe environment in which to work. At the time of writing, the Minister of Interior was planning to set an ambitious goal of 10,000 female police officers in the Afghan National Police. Despite the recent high-profile appointments of women to senior roles – for example, Afghanistan’s first female district police chief has just been appointed in Kabul – more needs to be done to train, retain and create the safe conditions for women to participate meaningfully in the security forces. Eventually, with more women in these public roles, it is hoped they will help to improve the position of women in Afghan society. There are several problems with presenting a monolithic view of the oppression of women in Afghanistan. First, it tends to ignore what casual observation reveals: that, despite the reports, oppressed women are not the norm. Second, accounts tend to be sensationalized by Western journalists and others searching for “human interest” stories, or attempting to characterize Afghanistan as strange, backward, and different from, if not altogether more inferior to, the rest of the world. Third, descriptions of the situation of Afghan women usually separate them from their social and cultural context and assess them according to feminized Western standards. Their situation also may be falsely ascribed to Islamic belief and practice. Lastly, the numerous accounts have the effect of depersonalizing individual victims by making them stock characters set against a backdrop of Afghanistan as a disturbed, dysfunctional, and failed state. Altogether, the effect is to present a problem so overwhelming that it cannot be wholly comprehended or solved. The truth is that the treatment of women in Afghanistan is as various as is it elsewhere. It may be that the incidence of violence is higher than in some other countries, but the fact is we do not know exactly the rate of violence against women because there are no reliable statistics. However, observation shows many caring marital and family relationships, indulgent husbands and fathers, daughters encouraged to pursue university education, and women with professional careers or working in offices or village fields alongside men who are not relatives.There are also more women in Parliament than in some Western countries, as well as women elected to Provincial Councils, serving on the community development councils formed under the Afghanistan National Solidarity Program, taking part in local shuras, and giving strong leadership and voice to women’s organizations. Nor are women in the private sphere necessarily oppressed. They own property, choose their sons’ wives, arrange marriages, settle disputes, and manage household resources and family property.Historically, there have been famous female leaders such as NazooAnaa, “the mother of Afghan nationalism.” Promoting women’s leadership through government will be most effective if capable women are appointed to senior decision-making positions through a credible process that ensures their legitimacy in the eyes of the public.The national unity government’s manner of picking women for senior posts, in particular the two candidates who did not receive a vote of confidence from the parliament, visibly “lacked credibility and thus delegitimized those women,” an Afghan media observer pointed out. An international development expert believed that the only way to “normalize women’s leadership roles is for women to have legitimacy and an authorizing environment that protects that mandate—that is, through political will, provision of adequate resources, and implementation capacity.” Without these, the appointment of women to senior positions is merely symbolic. Women’s having a legitimate leadership role in government, an Afghan international policy expert suggested, would help build “a strong state, the prerequisite for any and all that must be achieved in Afghanistan, including enforcing women’s right to inheritance and property ownership.” Interviewees believed that a strong contributing factor to expanded women’s leadership could emerge when the population relies on women’s services and products for their daily needs. This, they emphasized, could open the doors to women’s positions in government and private-sector service delivery agencies. As several activists and prominent women pointed out, appointing women to key service delivery institutions, such as health, education, higher education, judiciary, and the security sector, has the potential to offer women a legitimate platform to exercise leadership and serve as role models, provided political will supports them and enough resources and capability (that is, the power to decide and enforce) are at their disposal. Such a measure would also give women a strong voice that neither the government nor the private sector and media can ignore. Another important measure is active mentorship. A female entrepreneur and activist believed that taking time out to “mentor and actively seek mentors is critical for women leaders, which can also help in fostering sisterhood and making leadership accessible as opposed to the current common pattern of inaccessibility. It is critical, however, as an Afghan leadership coach pointed out, to have and promote “role model women leaders for all layers of society, because today’s women on positions of national significance belong to a certain class, and thus lack relevance to a majority of young women who search for ideals and role models as they grow.Interviewees believed that a strong contributing factor to expanded women’s leadership could emerge when the population relies on women’s services and products for their daily needs. This...could open the doors to women’s positions in government and private-sector service delivery agencies. Although women are in positions of authority at the national level, for the status of women to change inAfghanistan women must be empowered throughout the bureaucracy. Women’s leadership in the civil service is crucial, because the civil service and subnational governance are the face of the state to communities at the local level. жүктеу/скачать 2,15 Mb. 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