AFGHANISTAN: Interview: The Female Afghan Delegate

Selay Ghaffar is part of the unofficial Afghan delegation, the official version of which is entirely male dominated.

A civil society activist for the Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, she managed to attend the London conference with her colleagues by applying for media accreditation.

inthenews.co.uk spoke to Selay ahead of her planned appearance at the conference's civil society session.

Have Afghan women's rights improved since 2001?

I think that we have a very strange graph in the improvement of women in Afghanistan. After 2001 there was a hope that women were starting to go to school, starting to go to university and work a little bit – we started to have a life again. But dramatically it has fallen down because of the security situation – we face many challenges, many problems. I think right now because of the security reason, because of the corruption and because of the presence of the criminal warlords still in the government system, we the women are facing many challenges and suffering the worst. And I can see that the security situation of women in all sectors of life will get worse day by day.

What does the Taliban reconciliation plan mean for women in Afghanistan?

We believe that first we should know the definition of 'moderate Taliban' – who are the moderate Taliban that we want to bring back to power by buying them? I think war and terror was just an excuse to enter into Afghanistan to reach the political and economic interests that this country has in Afghanistan, and right now at that time the Taliban were the worst and brutal regime in the world and you wanted to kick them out by your B-52. And right now by giving them dollars and asking them to come back to the government I think women will be paying a high price in this reconciliation because still, as I said, year by year we are facing many problems in this regard. With the Taliban somehow becoming part of this government, I am sure we will be sitting back in our homes behind the curtains. I think it will not work for the Afghan future.

What must President Karzai do in his second term to improve conditions for women?

Well, I think it's really difficult to ask President Karzai because I think we don't have one government in Afghanistan; there are many governments in Afghanistan. I think the international community and also the Afghan government should have a practical commitment and should secure and monitor the rights of women, because we are really suffering. These reconciliation calls will not help the rights of women. We really need a guarantee that women's rights should be secure, and there should be a monetary mechanism that guarantees women's rights are secure in this country.