Since its inception in 2003, Creativity for Peace (a New Mexico nonprofit organization with operations in Israel and the Palestinian Territories) has brought 146 girls, ages 15-17, of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths from Israel and Palestine to the United States for a summer camp program about peacemaking, using facilitated dialogue, art-making, field trips, and social time.
Afghanistan is what Amnesty International deems a "human rights catastrophe". Afghan women and girls have suffered mounting abuses, harassment and restrictions of their fundamental human rights.
Ms. Magazine wants to send a team of experienced international journalists to Afghanistan to document the current plight of Afghan women. In late June, three Afghan women were killed and 13 more were wounded in a bus bombing engineered by the Taliban. The Afghan women on that bus were registering women voters. Afghan warlords are determined to prevent women from participating in free elections, as this will threaten their power.
Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA) started in the Northern region, City of Mazar-e-Sharif, a process to collect signatures for a petition calling for the general disarmament of the irresponsible military men all over Afghanistan. It took a month and half to collect ten thousand signatures from women in Mazar city.
Herat is the largest city in western Afghanistan and a main trade city for exports. No education has been available to women and girls in Herat for the last decade under the Taliban regime. Recent patterns of civil strife in Afghanistan have destroyed about 95% of the infrastructure and services. Established in September 2002, the Herat Women's Learning Center serves about 425 women and children, with plans for service expansion during 2003.
Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a reporter for Jahan-I-Now (New World) newspaper, was arrested in October and sentenced to death January 22, 2008, after he supposedly confessed to blasphemy. Kambakhsh has said his intent was to foster discussion on the role of women in Islamic societies. Instead, he was arrested in the Balkh province, tried before a secret court without legal representation and sentenced to death.
In Kandahar, one of the most violent provinces in Afghanistan, women are gathering for peace because they are tired of watching their family and friends killed in senseless acts of violence. Women in Kabul and every otherprovince of Afghanistan will express their solidarity with the Kandahar women by reading a message of peace at their International Women's Day gatherings on March 8th.
According to the constitution of Afghanistan and national and international treaties, one of the important social rights of human beings is to determine their political future (the right to elect and to be elected), but unfortunately in Afghan society the women in are facing many problems in order to use their rights.
Although Afghanistan has signed the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Constitution guarantees equal rights for women and men, the government – along with the international community that provides some 90% of Afghanistan's income for public spending – has failed to ensure that the human rights of all Afghan women and girls are respected, protected and fulfilled.
In the lead-up to the 28 January London Conference on Afghanistan, Afghan women human rights defenders released the following statement with strong, specific recommendations on security, development and governance priorities for their country.
