Asia

At an international conference in London last week, seventy countries pledged to back Afghan President Hamid Karzai's plan to negotiate and reconcile with some Taliban.

A few major themes emerged from the Afghan conference today in London. One is that it's time to talk to the Taliban. Another is that the Afghan security forces need further empowerment both for future peace and stability, a process that must be Afghan-led in its entirety.

Behind the rhetoric, the fancy words and high-profile delegates, here's the reality.

At last week's London Conference on Afghanistan, the first in a series of summits led by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Afghan women were left out in the cold. Only four men thought it important enough to attend the “Women's Priorities” panel, an event assembled by Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), and billed as the primary Afghan women's event outside the summit itself.

Farida Tarana defied age-old Afghan tradition, death threats and sexual discrimination to become a pop star and later the public face of post-Taliban women's politics.

Now a local legislator, she is a prominent example of the progress Afghan women have made since the 2001 overthrow of the radical Islamist regime that barred them from education and working outside their homes.

Nearly ten years after the adoption by the UN Security Council of its groundbreaking resolution on Women, Peace and Security, known as resolution 1325, women are still not sufficiently represented in peace negotiations. At last week's conference on Afghanistan in London only one Afghan woman was scheduled to speak, co-presenting with a man the concerns of Afghan civil society.

More than three million Iraqi men have been killed in the Iraq War since 2003, leaving behind nearly 740,000 widows and an inestimable number of children. When suddenly left without a husband, newly widowed women have few resources and very little idea of what to do next.

Any agreement between the Afghan Government and the Taliban should include a clear commitment to protect women's human rights, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women said today.

This blog is written by Najwa Mekki, Communications Officer for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa. From 22-28 January she visited Yemen and made a trip to Amran to meet some of the women and children displaced by conflict in the country's troubled north.