Kabul to include mothers’ name on IDs BACKGROUND

Laleh Osmany says that she was shocked when one evening, 3 years ago, she received an invitation from a renowned writer to attend a religious ceremony in honor of his wife who had died a few days earlier.

While the invitation card had his name on it, it did not include any details of the woman who had been his life partner for several years. “I could not understand the logic behind this and why a renowned writer and teacher like him felt ashamed of mentioning his wife’s name on the card, which was for an

It is a rare win for women’s rights activists in a country, where due to deeply ingrained taboos a woman’s name is often missing from her wedding invitation or even her grave.

occasion dedicated to her,” Osmany told Arab News by phone from the western Afghan city of Herat.

The next day, the 28-year-old graduate of Islamic law from Herat University decided to launch the #Whereismyname social media campaign to call out Afghanistan’s “misogynistic” culture.

A crucial part of her efforts, Osmany said, was to have authorities include the names of mothers next to those of fathers on all national IDs, especially for women who were divorced, had lost their husbands to the decades-old Afghan war, or whose spouses were missing or had disappeared.

After the hashtag went viral and armed with a flood of support from social media users both at home and abroad, Osmany says her efforts finally bore fruit when the Afghan government — after several days of deliberations with religious scholars — amended the census law and accepted the proposal last week.

The next step is for the parliament to endorse the move which, according to several lawmakers, could happen as soon as it resumes after the summer break.

“We also joined the #Whereismyname campaign and talked about it in parliament, and to our constituencies who welcomed it greatly. Both men and women in the parliament and outside support this to a large extent,” Fawzia Naseriyar, a legislator from Kabul, told Arab News. It is a rare win for women’s rights activists in a country, where due to deeply ingrained taboos a woman’s name is often missing from her wedding invitation or even her grave.