Women are increasingly exposed to violence and exclusion from the public sphere as Afghanistan nears the 2014 security transition and conservative forces gain momentum.
Analysts say a spate of attacks on high-profile Afghan women has heightened fears that the limited gains for women’s rights will be reversed after NATO forces withdraw next year.
Last May, Afghanistan’s upper house of parliament quietly removed an electoral law that stipulated that a quarter of all provincial council seats should be allotted to women. When women politicians found out nearly a month later, they fought to have the bill recalled.
In Afghanistan, a female politician who escaped an assassination attempt in the south of the country says she fully intends to return to work.
Women across Afghanistan risk being unable to vote in next year's presidential elections because of a severe shortage of women in the security forces, the country's election monitor said on Wednesday.
Afghan authorities must make every effort possible to ensure the release and safe return of abducted Afghan woman MP Fariba Ahmadi Kakar and to provide greater protection for all women parliamentarians in the country, says the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
The Committee on Political Participation of Women (CPPW) urged political parties not to take advantage of the role of women in the 2014 election by using them as a tool to gain political mileage.
Noor Zia Atmar, a young activist and then one of the country’s first woman MPs, travelled the world with her colleagues to show that things were changing.