Afghan women are the living memory of thirty years in a country ravaged by war. A decade then there are few successes and many pending matters. Today, Afghan women can not decide the size of your family. Neither the amount of want to father children. Afghanistan in the Asian country with the highest fertility rate and the second in the world. Each woman gives birth to an average of 6.6 children throughout her life. 1,400 women die for every 10,000 births. The difficult access to health care reduces female life expectancy at age 45. Socially, women must severely restricted his movements and your lifes threatened by the Taliban. Almost ninety percent of Afghan women have suffered physical abuse at some time. Also sexual psychological or have been forced to accept a forced marriage. 2,400 women each year are self-immolation, said the Ministry of Women.
Ten years after the start of the last of his wars and the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghan women are threatening many of the achievements in recent times.
The abandonment of the country of the international forces would, again, mothers, wives and daughters at the mercy of the fundamentalists. The milestones achieved after decades of struggle in education or political activism, are currently threatened. If the West decides to leave the country and left to their leaders, fundamentalist groups and warlords, religious extremists re-impose years of darkness.
Large institutions and international organizations dedicated to the fight for freedom fear a transfer of rights of women in exchange for peace. Silence the female voice in a hypothetical negotiation would reduce the role of women in Afghan society to negligible limits.
Afghan women is the living memory of those years in a country ravaged by war, not always imported in the West.
A decade after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan returns to peaks of insecurity never achieved. Peace talks falter and national reconciliation seems more distant than ever.
Such instability and distrust of each other calls into question other achievements include the return of thousands of girls to schools and return to work of women in trades liberal hospitals, courts, offices or police stations.
The noise of war and inequality between urban and rural society seed of doubt each advance. In the field, high rates of female illiteracy get in trouble every step of normalization.
Despite some liberties achieved, there are still many Afghan provinces where women are severely restricted his movements, and physical integrity threatened by the Taliban. In scenarios such as Helmand and Kandahar, the fundamentalists continue to attack nursery schools, denying women's work away from the family environment or restricting its most basic movements.
In 2002, the Taliban left power and all the country girls' schools closed. Only five percent of women were literate, according to the program "Women for women ', United Nations. More than half of girls aged 18 were married and maternal mortality was the second largest in the world. Now, Afghanistan is at risk of return to those years, between darkness and social questions.
A decade later, the Allied intervention leaves just four percent of the courts of the country under the responsibility of women, just over six percent of them with the responsibility of representing the public prosecutor or working as lawyers, according to UNIFEM. In schools, female employment of thirty percent of the jobs as teachers and a similar figure in political representation in Parliament glimpse leaves a rebound in the incidence of female society in a country ravaged by years of war.
During these years, the Kabul government has put in place mechanisms to defend judicial and police harassment of women sexist and inequality. The legislation has been amended and has increased the number of officers dedicated specifically to combating gender violence.
Almost ninety percent of Afghan women have suffered physical abuse at some time. Also sexual, psychological or have been forced to accept a forced marriage, according to AIHRC.
2,400 women were autoinmolan each year, according to the Ministry of Women. And when girls come of age, only 18 percent continue their studies at school.
Portraits
1770. Shima. Shima stands the burka for the photo shoot and shows his big nose, which can not cover his face with sadness. During the wars between Mujahideen lost three relatives. One brother died in Kabul, a few days after the Taliban entered the city in September 1996.
A rocket landed in the street, when he went to buy bread for Kampani. His brother was named Abdollah Khan and was very young. His brother-Ezmari, died of another rocket, also in Kabul. And Haji Mohammad's cousin, Shima, also died in the city under mysterious circumstances, the woman says.
Shima's woes do not end there. The house was burned during the war between the Taliban and the Mujahideen. They lost all their belongings. "We were also stolen. We know who burned the house, but we can not point to anyone for fear, "he says.
1878. Rocul Rocul is 30 and lifting the burqa for the photo shoot. During the war between the Taliban and Northern Alliance, his family lived in northern Afghanistan. A rocket hit their house, located in Kapisa. His brother, Khanjan, 16, died from shrapnel. Rocul was wounded in the arm can not move even today.
He has three sons and two daughters. "My husband is very old," he says. "He's always at home and can not work." The sick mother also lives with them. She is sick and must go to the hospital together regularly.
4612. Shakila Razwy. At 37 years, survives as can Shakila in Kabul in the area known as Qualynaw, closer to the mountains of the city of Kabul. Just keep the vision in one eye, but his good humor kept alive, despite the hardship, a family desectructurada and having lost a brother - Ali - in Kabul during the fighting against the Taliban. "We never knew how he died - he says - but they brought her body and gave him burial," he laments. Ali was a civilian.
4706. Magul Zamany. Her husband died a year ago, during a suicide bombing in Kabul. Her husband was 30, five more than her.
4736. Feroza Muhmady. He was only a year old when his grandfather was murdered by the Russians, in Maihdan Wardak.