International Women's Day

Today, 8 March, is International Women’s Day. The theme for this year is ending impunity for violence against women. Not surprisingly this is an issue about which I am fairly passionate. Here in Afghanistan the levels of violence perpetrated against women and girls is heartbreaking. Worse, the victims are almost entirely without any recourse to justice, protection or even an escape.

But as striking as the problem is here in Afghanistan, the women here are not alone. Women all over the world, including in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, are living with violence.

Some statistics about violence against women and girls:

• Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.
• Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.
• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her.
• Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.
• It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically "missing." They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.
• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.
• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.
• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world's conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.
• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

I find the thought of it overwhelming, this violence going on all around us all over the world. Violence against women is a crime, whether it is perpetrated by family or strangers, in the public sphere or behind closed doors, in times of peace or conflict. States have an obligation to protect women and girls from violence, to hold accountable perpetrators and provide justice and remedies to the victims. I spend a lot of my working time to assist states to better fulfill this obligation, and holding them accountable when they do not. But ending violence is not just the Government’s responsibility – everyone in society, men and women, has a responsibility to act when confronted with such violence. Today on International Women’s Day I urge you all to take action to prevent this violence going unnoticed, unpunished and unhindered. Find a small step that you feel comfortable taking:

• volunteer to train to be the contact point for women and girls in your office or school who have been bullied or harassed;
• report the domestic violence going on in your apartment building to the police;
• approach a domestic violence victim support organization in your community and ask for their suggestions;
• make a donation to an organization working to help women who are recovering from violence in war-affected countries;
• paint, draw, photograph or write about violence, or about ways to end or recover from violence.

I’m sure you’ll think of a hundred more ways to take action to end violence against women. Share your ideas and inspire others.

One week in Badghis

This week I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of working with a good friend, the lovely, hardworking and very competent Kate. It has been a busy and often challenging week as I simultaneously:

• managed the logistics for the workshop Kate has been teaching on criminal justice, with a focus on gender issues;
• delivered my own 'introduction to human rights' workshop for all the staff of our new Badghis office;
• monitored and supported the Attorney General’s “Campaign Against Torture” as it was carried out in Badghis; and
• followed up on a series of individual human rights cases with police, prosecutors and the Chief Judge.

But despite the heavy workload, the physical challenges of a mission to Badghis and the mental and emotional strain, it has been a wonderful week. Firstly, and most importantly, I've been doing all this alongside Kate, whio is delightful company and a caring friend. Secondly, I feel this week as though we are achieving something positive, Thirdly, and possibly as a result of the previous two points, I’ve had a week mostly free from the oppressive presence of the black dog. Warning - this is a long post – it has been a long and very full week! The emotional strain noted above comes from dealing with the individual cases. One related to eight men charged with the murders of five health clinic staff but who have now been detained for months and months beyond the legal time limits. These murders sent deep ripples of fear and sadness through the development community in Afghanistan when they took place last year. The victims were Afghan staff of an NGO running health clinics in an otherwise unserved district of Badghis, they were shot and killed by armed men who burst into the clinic compound and opened fire. Eigth months later, after the charges against these suspects were found to be without substance at the primary court, they are still detained and awaiting the hearing of the appeal by the National Security Directorate. I lobbied the NSD Prosecutor and the Chief Judge and received assurances that a trial date will be set this week. My concern is not only for the rights of the detainees (although this is a serious concern especially given their aquittal at the primary court trial) but also for the families of the victims who badly need some sort of resolution. Another difficult case was that of a young women who died after burning herself in desperation after years of domestic violence. Her parents do not want to press charges against the husband. Fortunately in Afghan law they don’t need to, the police and prosecutors have an obligation to investigate wherever there is an indication that a crime has taken place, but sometimes they need a little bit of encouragement. Kate helped me explain to the prosecutors the legal basis on which they could proceed - with charges of assault being relatively easy to make out, and a possibility even of a more complicated but not impossible charge of murder or incitement to suicide. The workshop Kate was teaching has been my pet project for months now – ever since I made my first mission to Badghis. I found that it was difficult to intervene with police and prosecutors on many cases, especially cases involving women, because they were not necessarily familiar with the relevant provisions of Afghan law, including the Constitution. Several misconceptions were particularly widespread – including the belief that article 130 of the Constitution gives police and prosecutors the right to refer to Hanafi fiqh jurisprudence (interpretations of the Quran by some designated experts) if there is no relevant provision in the law. In fact this article gives such a right only to the courts. Another widely held view, and one which is usually based on the article 130 argument, is that it is a crime for women to run away from home and that they can be arrested, detained and prosecuted as such. There is no such crime in the Penal Code, and the so-called “crime” is derived from a widely held interpretation of Hanafi fiqh – relying on article 130 of the Constitution. Okay, I’m writing my way into a fairly complicated legal discussion here which would require me to discuss the different kinds of crimes in Sharia (Islamic) law, and the particular way in which these three different types of crime (ta’zir, qasas, and hadood) are treated in Afghan law. It is an extremely interesting legal discussion, but probably only to criminal lawyers, Sharia scholars and human rights lawyers. So instead I will summarise by saying that the applicable law in Afghanistan (applying as it does key principles of Sharia law) provides protection for women in many of the types of cases that I often encounter in my monitoring work. Many police and to a lesser but still significant extent, prosecutors are not familiar with Afghan law. If they do know some of the key provisions, they have often never had access to a clear legal analysis of how different sections interact with each other. In my regular monitoring work I often try to raise awareness of these provisions on a case-by-case basis. But obviously a more systematic approach would be better. The Attorney General’s office in Kabul is currently developing a national training and professional development strategy, which will hopefully bring a consistent and national approach to all training for prosecutors. But after a year in Afghanistan, approximately half of which I spent in Kabul and the other half working in some of the countries most remote and neglected provinces (like Badghis and Ghor), I’ve realised that waiting for national or centralised programmes to reach us out here is going to be a very long wait. So I decided to make it my goal to bring the best trainers I could find to Badghis and Ghor. Kate is one of the best, and I'm not only saying that because I am so fond of her, I saying that as a lawyer and someone with experience of training. Not only is she qualified in Sharia law, common law and civil law, she is also intimately familiar with Afghan law and she is a skilled teacher, using participatory methods, like roles plays and case studies, to create a really effective learning experience. My organization doesn’t organise workshops of this kind, so I have no budget for it. Kate’s organization has provided her time and the workshop materials, but everything else – including our accommodation and meals here in Badghis, the tea and sweets, the paper, the pens, and the lovely colour-printed certificates were paid for by Kathryn and I personally. I asked my friends at the Spanish PRT to help out by providing a cooked lunch for the participants each day and they did a great job. The Department of Women’s Affairs gave us a room for two days and then the provincial hospital let us use there large meeting room for the rest of the week. The participants all paid for their own transport to travel from the districts into Qala-e-Naw, the provincial centre. I’m not sure how they were accommodated while in town for the week, I hope that the Office of the Prosecutor and the Provincial Chief of Police helped with that. We didn’t pay per diems which is a common practice here since the official salaries are too low for people to actually survive on them. All in all it was a budget workshop and Kate and I would not have been surprised if turn out had been low as a result. Instead we had the provincial head of the CID, as well as District Chiefs of Police and CID Chiefs from almost all the districts in Badghis. We also had District Prosecutors from all districts and a good delegation from the provincial Office of the Prosecutor. We also had one female Provincial Council member, someone I had met on previous visits because she takes on a role in advocating for women in the legal system here in Badghis, and two senior staff from the Department of Women’s Affairs. Put simply, we had everyone we could have hoped for, all the people who have the power to choose whether or not to arrest and prosecute a man alleged to be beating his wife, or a woman who has been accused of farar az manzel or running away from home. They are also the people who will decide how to deal with a case of rape – which does not exist as a separate crime in the Penal Code, but can be prosecuted under zina (sex outside of marriage) provisions – and who will need to decide whether or not to also prosecute the rape victim for zina (not uncommon). So after months of battling some administrative and substantive barriers within my own organization, and then several false starts when bad weather preventing Kate travelling from Kabul to Herat, she finally arrived last week. We had a lovely Friday together in Herat during which I got to play tour guide and we also enjoyed the relatively balmy weather (it seems the “big cold” is over in Herat, Payman who cooks at our guesthouse tell me so). We visited the famous minarets of Herat and Kate took some lovely photos of the guardian, and of the graves in the shrine next to the minarets. The graves are those of the son of Timur and his wife, a godly woman to whom this shrine is dedicated, and their three children. I also took Kate to my personal favorite, this monument to the ordinary people of Afghanistan who fought against the Soviet occupiers. There are, of course, many different views about the different episodes of Afghanstan's history and I try to avoid giving the impression that I understand any of them well enough to have formed my own. I simply love this monument for it's audacity and it's creativity. Whose idea was it, I wonder, to create a monument out of an actual Soviet tank by simply adding these figures with their pitchforks and their determined faces. On Saturday morning, after a great meeting with the Head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission who was so impressed by Kate that I am hoping I get some credit just for being the one who brought her to town, we set out for Badghis. I have often felt when driving out on road missions that this part of my job feels much more like a mini-vacation. Sure the roads are bone-jangling and there are no public toilets along the 6-7 hour journey (hence the photo of me walking off into the empty distance), but check out this scenery!

We’ve been in Badghis almost a week now and since this post is growing far too long, I’ll just give you a few vignettes. The head of the CID from one remote district bumped into an Afghan colleague of mine after two days in the workshop and told him “I have learned so much. I now know that it is not a crime for a woman to run away from home and I swear to God that I will never again arrest a woman for this reason”. After a guest lecture from our friends in the civilian component of the Spanish PRT (a nurse and a lawyer) on forensic medicine (including the unreliability of virginity tests, for which I give up big respect to my fantastic assistant who had to translate this difficult session) several of the prosecutors asked the nurse if he would come back to give them a more comprehensive workshop on these issues. One night I watched as Kate spent several hours, until 10 o’clock at night, perfecting the design of the completion certificates. She understands that these certificates will be treasured by all participants and will become a feature of their curriculum vitae. She also understood that some colour and good quality card would be considered a sign of the importance of the workshop. Every single moment of the 'introduction to human rights' workshops I ran for our new staff was a gift. They were open to everyone, including the security guards, the drivers, the radio operators, and the cleaners. Along with the pleasure of getting to know them all a bit better I was very grateful for a wonderful illustrated version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights published by our head office in Kabul.

The images are so well conceived and executed that the participants who couldn't read were still able to follow. In fact, one of the my favorite moments was when I directed everyone to the page which set out the right to have an effective remedy for violations of the rights set out in the Declaration and asked the participants what they thought the State was obliged to do based on this right. One of the female cleaners was the first to respond, describing perfectly what she saw in the picture and in doing so giving an excellent answer. Another highlight was when I gave a scenario in which I was monitoring a human rights violation in Qala-e-Naw and asked the participants to tell me everything I was doing wrong. This story caused much amusement, and even the shyest participant (a lovely, gentle security guard who was also illiterate) found the confidence to make a good point about how such monitoring should be conducted. My amazing Human Rights Assistant, R, and I would finish up the two workshops each afternoon and then go off to do our monitoring work – visiting the prison, interviewing victims, meeting with the prosecutors, the Department of Women’s Affairs and eventually the Chief Judge. After one meeting we were walking back to the compound in the falling dusk and I asked R if he was tired. He smiled and told me that he gets tired when he feels we are not making any difference. But if he sees that things have moved forward even one centimetre for one person then he is not tired. I knew exactly what he meant.

Gratitude

Space! I barely even realised how much I had been craving it until I got some and felt such an incredible rush of happiness. From the moment the plane took off I felt as though I had been set free from a kind of prison. Space! As we flew over the plains of Herat and then up over the mountains of Ghor, I had this huge, silly grin on my face and my spirit felt lighter than it has in weeks. This week I was grateful for space and the freedom to move through it. Cheghcharan, the provincial capital of Ghor is a small, poor town. I spent some time this week in the bazaar, trying to buy decent clothes and shoes for the orphanage, because I hadn't brought enough with me from Herat for the number of kids that I found when I got there. Here are some images from the market. This week I was grateful for my income and what it enables me to do. Most of these children are not orphans, although many would come from women-headed households. Some even have fathers, but their families are too poor to care for them. On my first visit the Director explained all this to me, and shocked me with his announcement that they had between 250 and 300 children in the orphanage (I suspect some of the children come and go from their family homes, hence the approximate number). I realised that I couldn't possibly give enough for all the children on this visit, so I suggested that most of the clothes and shoes I had brought would fit the youngest children. Next time I visit I'll take something for the older children, probably books and pens, I think. So we agreed that the Director would sort the clothes into approximate sizes and I would return on Thursday morning so we could distribute them together to the smallest children. When I arrived on Thursday it was snowing. The Director brought me into the yard of the orphanage and as I stood there, not quite sure what was going on, all the children filed out of the buildings and stood around the yard, in the snow, looking expectantly at me. I desparately tried to tell the Director that I didn't have enough clothes for all the children, and that in any case they shouldn't be standing out in the snow. Just as I was beginning to feel completely overwhelmed by the terrible situation I had created in my clumsiness a car pulled up and my fabulous colleague/assistant got out, he had finished his meeting with the Governor and decided to come and see how I was doing. As he stepped out of the car I burst into tears, explaining that I had got myself into this horrible situation and begging his help to fix it! He was great, we explained to the Director that it was too cold for the children to wait outside and he explained to the children that this time we only had clothes for the littlest children. He helped me organise for all the children to go inside and then come out in small groups so that we could fit the clothes and shoes properly. My other colleagues arrived - Muna and Harry - and they were fantastic. I watched Muna gently trying to fit the tiny, cold feet and arms into our second-hand boots and jackets. Meanwhile Harry was slipping polar fleece hats onto cold little heads and checking which children didn't have socks so that we could make sure they got the best we had. This week I was grateful for my colleagues, good hearted and hard working people on whom I can rely and with whom I can have fun. This little girl was being helped by an older boy. From what I could make out he was not her brother, but he was beautifully gentle with her and a very good advocate for her, making sure she got everything he could find that would fit her. The little boy on the left has his new hat, boots, jacket and fleecy shirt and pants on as well. In the end, things became a little chaotic again, as the older children all made their way out into the yard and wanted to get somethings for themselves. I had bought six footballs and so we told the teachers to let the children play with them, we also found a box of clothes donated by someone from the Lithuanian PRT which had not been distributed so we were able to give some of the older children clothes, hats, gloves and shoes from that box. This week I was grateful for the chance to give and most of all for the fabulous Commander, whose idea this was in the first place and whose generosity and kind-heartedness help me keep my faith in the good. Another highlight of this mission was my visit to a community-based girls' school in Dowlatyar. The girls were studying mathematics, chemistry and physics when I arrived. When I asked them how many wanted to be doctors, teachers, lawyers and engineers respectively, most of them said they wanted to be doctors. Which means they are aiming to get the highest grades possible in their exams. I told them about Maria Bashir, the women who was recently appointed to be the Provincial Chief Prosecutor in Herat and said I wondered whether the next Director of Public Health for Ghor province was in the room. Perhaps this beautiful girl? This week I was grateful for my education and everything it has brought me, including the chance to work here. And finally, just to prove I was there, here is a photo of me with my fabulous colleague Reza (on the right) without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything useful at all, and our counterpart from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Mr Hakak. This week, as always, I was grateful for Reza! We stopped for a photo op on our way to Dowlatyar, and I felt free as a bird after these weeks of restricted movement in Herat. I also got to walk from one village to the next through the snow in Dowlatyar - much to the astonishment of the locals who seemed to expect a foreigner like myself to collapse in a heap of helplessness as soon as I stepped away from the 4x4! This week I was grateful that I can walk with ease. One final set of photos - the rest are on flickr if you want to see more. These men bring the wood in from the country-side to Cheghcharan town every morning to sell it for fuel. Their donkeys are piled high with dried scrub and wood. I worry about the environmental impact of this practice, but have no better option to offer them right now so I am grateful for the warmth given off by the wood stoves that I found in every office I visited, and (thank goodness) in every prison cell as well. This week I was grateful for bukhari (stoves) There are some strange loud noises going on this morning, it sounds like explosions somewhere in the city. More often than not these are controlled explosions, getting rid of unexploded ordinanaces found by the demining teams, but it reminds me that I'm back in Herat and won't be able to go out walking as I please until I go home to New Zealand in February or when I return to Ghor, whichever comes first. This week I am grateful for being able to travel.

Yearning for justice

This young girl's red hair, bold eyebrows and serious look captivated me.

She is the Deputy President of the Provincial Council, and you just watched as she argued passionately with the President of the Council about the need for human rights and justice in Afghanistan. He had suggested that it was time for people in Afghanistan to accept that there had been no human rights in this country for 30 years, that those who had been responsible for abuses of human rights were still around and are not going to go away. He argued that it was time to simply accept this and let it be. He asked: what would make things better anyway? Did she want to see all those responsible for human rights violations executed? Would that make things better? She argued that it was never too late for justice, that she didn’t want to see those responsible killed, instead she wanted them publicly identified, investigated and tried. She wanted a chance for the victims and their families to have their stories told, to have their pain heard and acknowledged. She wanted people to know that those who were responsible for their suffering were not allowed to get away with it without any accountability or punishment. She talked about war crimes tribunals in other countries, about war criminals who had been held accountable for their crimes in other jurisdictions. She talked about global efforts to have Pinochet tried and about the trial of Milosovic. She is obviously intelligent, well informed and committed to justice. She is, quite simply, a woman who you admire, who you would like to get to know better and to work with. She is the kind of woman who can give you hope for this country and a sense of purpose and optimism in your work. So it is incredibly hard when you have to be so careful about what you say in response to her, when you have to carefully select each word to ensure that you are speaking in accordance with your organisation’s official position on the matter. She is referring to the Human Rights Watch report on human rights abuses committed by the Jehadi leaders and factions in Kabul in the 1990’s. She is furious that President Karzai has rejected the report and refused to act on its recommendations to bring those leaders (now holding powerful positions in Karzai’s cabinet and in the Parliament) to trial. You first have to clarify one point - she has mistakenly attributed the HRW report to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. This confusion is proving to be common across the country and is risky for the Commission, so you are careful to point out that the report she is referring to was not produced by the Commission, but rather by an independent NGO called ‘Human Rights Watch’. You explain that AIHRC was involved in the background research for the Action Plan on Peace, Reconciliation and Justice and they did produce a report based on their consultations with thousands of Afghans, that report was “A Call for Justice”. It has been used as the basis for the development of the Action Plan. You remind her that on 10 December 2006, International Human Rights Day, President Karzai launched the Action Plan. You say that this is a very important development, one that the AIHRC and the international community have been pushing for over the past year. You remind her that the plan is comprehensive (i.e. that it does not only deal with accountability but also with victims needs to tell their stories and to see their experiences reflected in shared histories of Afghanistan) and that it is progressive (i.e. it starts with steps like establishing national memorial days and have a series of phases that should happen consequentially). You feel acutely aware that in the face of genuine passionate feeling you are responding with policy. It is good, sound policy and you have no argument with your superiors in Kabul who have developed the policy. But you feel that this woman deserves more from you. You know that the launch of the plan was completely overshadowed by the reaction to the Human Rights Watch press release calling for the prosecution of a number of key figures involved in human rights abuses in the 1990s. Those named in the HRW report and press release have decided to use this as an opportunity to attack the international community and the AIHRC and to put the President in an extremely difficult situation. You are afraid that if this situation escalates it will endanger the implementation of the Action Plan itself, so you feel that the policy you have been given is correct. But in your heart you want to join with her in her passion. Instead you talk calmly and carefully about the Action Plan and ask for ideas about what you and she can do together in the province to promote greater awareness of the plan. You argue that it is the right of people here in Farah to know about the plan and to understand what the plan proposes should happen in Afghanistan. You look her in the eye and tell her that your mandate is to promote implementation of the Action Plan, so although you understand she may be disappointed in some aspects of the plan this is what you have to offer. You look her in the eye and tell her that you do not work in Kabul, that you work in Farah, so although you do not disagree with her suggestions that more needs to be done at the national level to ensure implementation of the plan you are here, not there, and you can only offer to work with her on initiatives to promote the Action Plan here. You watch her face while your interpreter translates your words to her. You see that although she is passionate and ready to fight about these issues, she is not going to fight you. She is going to be gracious to you, she is going to accept your mandate, and accept what you can do rather than railing against what you cannot do. You hear her say that she will prepare a proposal for some dissemination activities in Farah, using radio, televisions and mobile awareness raising workshops for the remote areas. You let out the breath that you have been holding. You take in another deep breath and feel yourself begin to believe that you can find a small way to make your contribution in this place. Background information: Transitional justice is the term used to describe the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society's attempts to address past abuses, ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation after a period of war, conflict and/or oppression. These may include a combination of both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals. In 2002 the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission was given a mandate, through a decree signed by the Chairman to “undertake national consultations and propose a national strategy for transitional justice and for addressing the abuses of the past.” Throughout 2003 and 2004 AIHRC undertook a widespread consultation, comprised of :

1. the application of a survey, designed to capture quantitative data and test for preferences to 4151 respondents; and
2. the convening of over 200 focus group discussions with over 2000 participants, designed to capture qualitative data and test for perceptions.

The consultation took eight months and covered 32 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as well as refugee populations in Iran and Pakistan. I highly recommend the resulting report “A Call for Justice” to anyone with an interest in transitional justice in Afghanistan. But I do warn you that it is disturbing to read. A pdf file of the report can be accessed here Based on the findings reported in “A Call for Justice”, the Government of Afghanistan, in cooperation with the AIHRC and UNAMA (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), developed the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice. It was presented and agreed upon at the Hague Conference on Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan on 6-7 June 2005. Although the Government of Afghanistan adopted the plan in early 2006 the President did not formally launch it until 10 December 2006. Where do I fit into this? Part of my job description is to promote and support the implementation of this Action Plan – by raising awareness of the plan amongst the general public, the media, and local authorities. Some of the Afghan people with whom I discuss this plan want more than the plan offers – more immediate judicial action to bring violators to account, for example, where the action plan proposes more progressive actions starting with memorials and the development of shared historical narratives.

I feel deep sympathy for those victims of gross human rights violations who want immediate justice – but I also trust the wisdom of those people who have developed this plan, taking into account the current political and security environment in Afghanistan. Essentially, although my heart longs to meet these cries for justice with the response that they yearn for, my head tells me that people who know so much more than me have so carefully mapped out this path, and that we need to follow it step by step.

Sunday Scribblings: Change

Sunday Scribblings: Change Originally uploaded by frida world.

Any time I venture into the bazaar here in Afghanistan I'm approached by women asking the equivalent of "Can you spare some change?". I struggle with this request. Given my reputation as a bleeding heart my reluctance to give money may seem strange. The problem is that I want a different kind of change for them. I want real social change. I want a different kind of development aid, an inclusive and effective kind of assistance. I want the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow into this country to bring about noticeable change for these women. I want a radical reorganistion of social and economic structures at a global and local level in order to provide these women with more choices. I want them to have real alternatives to begging. Believe me, I want to given them my spare change. In the past 15 years since I left my parent's home on a farm in small town New Zealand I have changed from single to married, from married to divorced and then back to single again. I have lived in more than twenty different homes (and those are only the ones into which I moved my boxes for long enough to remember them) with more than thirty different housemates. I have lived and worked in four different countries and traveled in more than forty. I have worked for the government, for the private sector, for not-for-profit organisations and for the United Nations. I have been a student, a storyteller, a lawyer, an aid worker, a project manager, a policy advisor, a human rights officer and a fairy. I've changed my religion, and changed my world view. I've often reflected on the apparently limitless possibilities from which I may choose my path. I've sometimes revelled in this freedom and other times felt paralysed by it. Believe me, I have change to spare. So when she takes hold of my sleeve and asks me "Can you spare some change?" I only wish I could give her the kind that she deserves. Inspired by Elspeth

Afghan women saving mothers' lives

Last night I was having an after dinner drink with some colleagues and visitors from Kabul and we got onto the topic of midwife projects here in Afghanistan. I raised the subject because of a very cool Icelandic woman who is based up in Chegcharan in Ghor who is a development advisor to the PRT and who has been putting lots of energy into getting midwife training happening up there. This story was in the news yesterday. I found it both disturbing and somewhat encouraging. Nothing really seems very encouraging in this country, but here is a little step that might make a big difference to some women and babies. Afghan women saving mothers' lives Dec 17 - (AFP) In a white coat and with a dark scarf covering her hair, newly graduated midwife Fatema, 20, is just months on the job and still a little nervous. But the determined young woman has no doubts about the importance of her work in a small clinic in rural northern Afghanistan, a country with one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates. Fatema's elder sister bled to death in childbirth when she was 16, having been married at 15. Her baby's shoulder became stuck in her small pelvis and two traditional birth attendants broke its neck trying to pull it out. It was a complicated breech delivery, with the child positioned bottom first, and the untrained birth attendants -- who help 80 percent of Afghan women have their babies -- did not know how else to handle the problem. "Look, if someone had known something at that time, we could have referred them to go to hospital," says Fatema, which is not her real name because like many Afghan women interviewed for this story she did not want her name to be used. Lack of knowledge and superstition amongst the rural community in Takhar province spawned rumours afterwards that the dead teenager must have been "bad" to deserve such a fate. When the British medical charity Merlin came to Takhar in 2004 to look for women to train as midwives, Fatema jumped at the chance. In February she and 20 other women became the first graduates from a USAID-funded 18-month course at the Community Midwife Education centre in the provincial capital Taloqan, returning to their districts with internationally recognised diplomas to improve the chances of women surviving birth. War-shattered Afghanistan is behind only Sierra Leone for the highest number of women to die in childbirth. The maternal mortality rate here is around 1,600 out of 100,000 live births, according to a recent UNICEF survey. This means that one in six women between the ages of 15 and 49 die giving birth. This compares with a rate of about 13 out of 100,000 in Britain, where one in 3,800 women die in childbirth, according to 2000 UN statistics. There are many grim stories to illustrate the problem in Afghanistan: of traditional birth attendants, called dayee, cutting a baby's limbs off with a kitchen knife in a desperate attempt to save a woman's life when something went wrong in delivery; of pregnant women bleeding to death on a days-long donkey ride to find help at a far-away health facility; of husbands beating their pregnant wives' bellies because they can't afford another child. "It is the worst I have ever seen," says Addie Koster, who heads the Taloqan centre and has worked in Afghanistan for the past five years after stints in Africa, Asia and Central America. There are many reasons so many women die, says Koster, most linking back to the 25 years of war that destroyed the country's infrastructure and entrenched a social system that denied women basic rights. Often mothers' pelvises are too small for birth, she says. This can be because they are young -- with nearly two-thirds of girls married before age 16, according to statistics cited by the United Nations -- or malnourished as about two-thirds of pregnant Afghan women are. When complications arise, the difficult terrain and lack of infrastructure can mean clinics are days away although some women are too poor to even afford the donkey ride. Dayees sometimes rely on folklorish techniques -- such has biting on hair to dislodge the placenta -- that may appear to work in simple births but are of little use when things go wrong. More dangerously, they make liberal use of oxytocin -- an injectable hormone that can be bought in the smallest bazaar without a prescription -- to induce labour even when the baby just cannot fit through the pelvis. In a custom entrenched during the 1996-2001 rule of the ultra-conservative Taliban who forced women under the all-covering burqa that most still wear, some men still refuse to allow their wives to go to clinics where only a male nurse or doctor is present. Taloqan's Community Midwife Education centre is a key part of a strategy taking on all these problems. One of its main aims is to boost the number of women in the province giving birth with the help of a skilled attendant from the current eight percent. Province-wide clinics are being built -- although in one case staff operated out of tents for two months before being able to move into a newly constructed building. Female staff are being trained and recruited from other provinces, even other countries; community meetings are explaining the benefits of pre- and ante-natal check-up, having a baby with a trained midwife, and breast feeding. Another of the centre's fresh graduates, 22-year-old Lailuma, is installed in a clinic far from the provincial capital. Since arriving in April, she has helped with 15 deliveries -- up from zero before she arrived because women would not see the then male-only staff. "The area where I live is very remote. There were no midwives," the stylish woman says softly, a black scarf framing her face. "I wanted to become a midwife because I wanted to do something for women." Twenty-two new students have been in place since April, learning to suture on chunks of raw meat and delivering the same dummy baby over and over again before getting down to the real thing. They are not shy about describing the difficulties facing Afghan women. "There are no cars, no road, no transport. And security is not good," says one explaining why most rural women give birth at home. "The dayees know nothing. After 20 years of war, no one knows anything. We have been left behind because of the war," says another. "During the Taliban it was worse," adds one more, recalling the government that refused to let women work which meant there were few female doctors for them to see. The situation is improving in provinces like Takhar which see little of the current Taliban insurgency, which is focussed on the south and east of the country. When the hardline regime fell, Takhar had only five female medical staff, says provincial health chief Hakim Aziz. Today the number is well on the way to the goal of putting at least two women into each of its 52 clinics. And whereas a community health clinic once saw on average five deliveries a month, there are now about 25, Aziz says. The new students at Merlin's centre were selected by their communities for the program and are obliged to return after graduation to work for at least five years. They will go a long way towards filling the 32 vacancies for midwives in Takhar, says Nezamuddin Jalil from the Social and Health Development Program. The group runs nine of the province's clinics including Fatema's at Bangi, a community of about 30,000 people 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Taloqan and dotted with green flags marking some of the fiercest battles of the US-led offensive that dislodged the backward-looking Taliban. "We started from zero," the doctor says. "There was no staff, no access. Now we have enough health facilities and enough equipment. But there is a lack of female staff." Despite the challenges, "day by day it will be ok," he says.

Where now feminism? Go global?

I was reading an interview with Katha Pollitt about her new book Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time and I was struck by her response to a question about the current state of 'feminism'. I consider myself a feminist in that I believe in and actively work and campaign for women's rights. But I notice that some of my contemporaries are reluctant to call themselves feminists and in some cases are even a little wary of feminist analysis and argument. In the interview, Katha was asked if she sees anything that might "reawaken" the feminist movement in the United States. In her response she comments on the very different experiences of different women: I think that there are areas in which the feminist movement is a victim of its own success. There have been so many victories, but again, spread in a very uneven way. So, if you’re an educated person, if you’re able to compete in the current economic setup, things are so much better for you than they were in my generation, let alone my mother’s generation. We forget about all those people who are not so well equipped to compete: single mothers, poor people, people who are not equipped for this modern sort of weird economy that we have. If you’re a factory worker, then you’re really in trouble. Even within New Zealand this gulf is wide between the experiences of educated, middle class, New Zealand-born white women (like me!) and many other women. But if we take a global perspective, the gulf becomes a gaping chasm and impossible to ignore. I am feeling startlingly inarticulate this morning, so I'll have to come back to this topic. But the point I am weaving my way towards could start with a question. What role do the global economy and international political relations play in maintaining gender inequalities in countries like Afghanistan? Another question would be, what advantages to more privileged women in 'developed' countries gain from the maintenance of the very same global structures that allow these inequalities to be sustained? Put another way, what would we have to give up in order for real change to be possible, and are we willing to give up anything at all?

Impact of conflict on women and children - Part II

Yesterday I went on mission again, this time to the isolated province of Ghor. I had a series of meetings with provincial government officials, including the Governor and the Chief Prosecutor, and with the Commander of the Provincial Reconstruction team (the military team responsible for security and reconstruction, in this case led by the Lithuaniuns with contingents from Iceland, Denmark and Croatia). The flight to Chegcharan, the provincial capital, is amazingly scenic with seemingly endless stretches of desertous and mountainous terrain revealing how beautiful and varied a limited palette of brown can be. Now that the mountians are covered in snow it is even more striking. But all that stark beauty is the result of drought and under-development so when you land the picture shifts from impressive beauty to heart-breaking poverty and deprivation. Those stunning white peaks, in reality, mean the beginning of the harsh winter which will cut off some of the more remote districts from the provincial centre. If winterization and drought relief assistance hasn't already reached people in those districts it could be prevented from getting there by the next snow fall. But on this trip my focus was not on economic and social rights, I was following up on a "jihad against corruption" which has been launched by the Attorney General of Afghanistan. The provincial prosecutor has been directed to begin investigations into a variety of allegations against local officials and local illegal armed commanders. He asked for my help, and this is the second time I've visited him to try and advise him on how to go about this process without putting himself or his staff into unecessary danger. This time he was particularly disconsolate and I think I will need to go more often and stay longer if I am going to be of real help to him. Thank goodness for the friendly Lithuanians, I'll plan a longer stay in January and look forward to more "opps tra la la". But the strongest impression left with me from this visit was of a man who came to me at the end of my time at the Prosecutor's office appealing for my help to recover his daughter who was allegedly kidnapped by a local commander several years ago when she was 5 years old. Again, I was struck by the degree to which women and children in Afghanistan are suffering as a result of conflicts which are led by men. Girl children suffer perhaps the most of all. This man stood in front of me in tears, having thrown off his turban to show me his shaven head in a gesture of deep despair. I asked the Chief Prosecutor what he had done to investigate the case, he told me that he had written to the Commander concerned but, not surprisingly, had recieved no repsonse. He told me that the police could not do anything etiher. I took the documents about the case from the distraught father and left with a heavy heart. I have no idea where this girl is now, nor what condition she is in. I will make every effort I can to locate her and use what little influence I have to return her to her family, but it is not a case that I can feel very optimistic about. In a meeting recently to discuss reconciliation efforts between two tribes in conflict I raised the issues of the need to involve women and children in reconciliation processes. As it goes here traditionally, the reconciliation processes involve only men, and only relatively powerful and influential men at that. The women and children, who obviously experience violent conflict in very different ways to the men, are never heard. Their voices and their experiences are absent from the 'mediation table'. I'm convinced that as long as those voices and those perspectives are not included in the peace building process, the process will not be successful. But when I raised this issue, I was told that the possibility simply does not exist. I won't give up, at the very least there are possibilities to involve women and children in the next stage of peace building, which will be the reconstruction and development projects that will hopefully be introduced into these divided communities. But I feel as though this point is so obvious that I can't believe others really expect a "peace process" dominated by men to work. Those men are weighing up different options, considering acceptable and unacceptable trade-offs. Surely it doesn't take an expert in conflict resolution to work out that what may be an acceptable trade-off to them might not be to the women and children who suffer as a direct result.

Impact of conflict on women and children - Part I

So this week I've had no time to feel sorry for myself, being this busy actually working on human rights issues is a great antidote for the blues. In case I needed any more inspiration, check out this little guy who managed to find a grin for me despite the pretty horrrific experiences he has recently been through and the really depressing conditions he is now living in.

Yesterday I made a mission to assess the human rights impact of recent conflict in an area which I won't name - just to be certain that the stories I tell here and the pictures I share don't put the people involved in any danger. I met mostly women and children who have not only been directly affected by the violence, facing armed men in their homes and seeing their fathers, brothers and husbands killed, but who are also now suffering as a result of having fled their home villages. They all reported that they still felt afraid of reprisals, so although I know you are all friends I'd rather be a bit over cautious.

As well as the kids, I was really impressed by fortitude of the women who bear the brunt of so much of the destruction. I met one 36 year old woman with 9 children (eldest daughter 20 years old, youngest baby breast-feeding as we talked). Her son had been killed in one ambush and then her husband (who was paralyzed from the waist down) was killed when the armed men from the other faction attacked their house two weeks ago. The eldest daughter was shot twice in the arm while she tried to protect her disabled father from the gunmen. We sat in the filthy room she and her children have been living in since they fled their village the night of the fighting, when her house was also looted, burned and shelled.

Anyway - things are a bit frantic and I'm off on another mission to another province tomorrow so this post will be brief.