Women’s rights must remain
FLICK DRUMMOND, the Tory MP for Meon Valley, on the plight of women in Afghanistan
THE COLLAPSE of the Afghan government and the takeover by the Taliban has been heartbreaking and frustrating.
In the coming days the UK government will do all it can to get those Afghan people who have helped us to safety. It is a difficult and fast-moving situation.
I would like to pay tribute to the 900 military personnel at Kabul airport working in such challenging circumstances. I would also like to thank the Foreign Office staff who have stayed behind.
Parliament was recalled last week to discuss the situation and I spoke. My focus was the fear the new Islamist regime will take away women’s rights. In the past few days, I’ve seen footage of courageous Afghan women protesting in front of Taliban guns.
But I believe the past 20 years have not been wasted. We have seen 40 per cent of girls in education in Afghanistan – nine million girls where there were none – with literacy rates of 56 per cent and 70,000 female teachers.
Four thousand midwives have been trained, up from 400 in 2001, and female MPs made up 28 per cent of parliament – an impressive achievement when in the UK we only comprise 34 per cent.
As I told the Commons, I can only hope that, from the ruins, some sense of how that freedom feels will remain and can be built on.
But as it stands, brave women who joined the Afghan army fear beheading. Girls face losing their education and women their rights to do as they please. There will be no women teachers, no women police officers and no women in political life. Women face being wiped from the face of Afghanistan unless they subject themselves to Taliban rule.
We must engage with the new regime and any country that has influence with it, particularly Pakistan, plus any Gulf backers.
Afghanistan will need aid. Delivering it must come with stringent conditions on honouring women’s rights, human rights and those of ethnic minorities. We must ensure the Taliban has the international community breathing down its neck from day one.