| Discussions of women’s rights in
Afghanistan often give rise to debates over “Western imposition”
versus “indigenous culture”. This paper avoids such facile
dualities. Instead, it unpacks the complex and multiple
transitions—security, political and socioeconomic—entailed by
post-conflict reconstruction, and examines the changing
institutional frameworks and the various global and local actors
that are setting out the new contours of women’s citizenship and
legal rights in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Current efforts to redefine women’s citizenship
and legal rights in the reconstruction process build on a troubled
history—most recently, more than 20 years of conflict, and the
social transformations, including those in gender relations, brought
about by the war economy.
The Bonn
Agreement of 2001 stated a clear commitment to mainstreaming gender
issues and redressing past injustices, and since then women have
gained in the area of legal rights. The Constitution of January 2004
guarantees their political representation and equality as
citizens.
But the limitations of such
commitments become clear in this paper. “The expansion of women’s
formal rights cannot, in any case, translate into substantive
benefits in the absence of security and the rule of law. Moreover,
women’s formal rights to civic participation may have limited impact
in a context where women remain wards of their households and
communities and where their most basic entitlements to education and
health continue to be denied”, according to the
author.
There remain what the author
calls “crippling disjunctures” between different facets of
post-conflict transition. Legal and governance reforms have advanced
at a faster pace than has been achieved in the security sector or
the transition to sustainable livelihoods. The time frames adopted
and outputs expected by international actors driving the women’s
rights agenda do not coincide with the length of time required for
profound changes in societal relations to result from peace-building
efforts.
Finally, women’s rights
continue to be highly politicized. “As the historical record
indicates, women’s rights have always been a contested issue in
Afghanistan, with periods of reform followed by violent backlash and
curtailment,” writes the author. “In the present context, many
unresolved questions remain concerning the respective roles of
Islamic and tribal laws and the stipulations of international
treaties to which the government is a signatory. Without a process
of consensus building through political normalization and
reconciliation, the risk that women’s rights will again be held
hostage to factional politics remains high.” This may itself produce
unintended effects, with disempowering consequences for
women.
Deniz
Kandiyoti is a Reader in the Department
of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London, United Kingdom.
Order OPGP4 from UNRISD; 37
pages, February 2005, US$ 12 for readers in industrialized countries
and US$ 6 for readers in developing and transitional countries and
for
students. |