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"True progress and justice" for Afghan women still "elusive"

With the media now concentrating on Syria, the ongoing appalling situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan has almost been ignored.    All too sadly, things are getting worse in Iraq - to the point of the collapse of the nation-State perilously close - and Afghanistan remains in a spiral of violence.  The women of Afghanistan are still not much advanced from where they were years ago - and certainly not post 9/11.

"Atrocities against the women of Afghanistan is still business as usual.

Amazingly, Afghan women’s rights have been extolled as one of the great, perhaps only, successes of America’s longest war. But the reality is very different; true justice and progress for Afghan women in Afghanistan remains painfully elusive.

Time and time again during my five years working in Afghanistan, I have witnessed how the abysmal justice system in Afghanistan remains weighted in men’s favor. There have been so many instances where women in Afghanistan are treated as guilty until proven innocent for “moral crimes” such as running away, rape and adultery. Changes have to happen, both in the justice system as well as within the culture in order to improve the status of Afghan women, both for now and in the future.

But for now, the justice system in Afghanistan continues to be grossly calibrated against women culturally, procedurally and often legislatively."


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