Interview with UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer

Noeleen Heyzer is Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In an interview with IRIN Heyzer said that the women of Afghanistan, long victims of repression and armed conflict in their country, had a pivotal role to play in shaping its future. QUESTION: What is it like to be a woman in the parts of Afghanistan under Taliban control? ANSWER: Whatever rights and freedoms women had before have been destroyed in a very dramatic way. Women have been prevented from working, girls have been taken out from school and they have had very little access to medical care. There are restrictions on how they appear in public and they are not allowed to walk in the street without being accompanied by a male child. Q: Has the plight of women changed in areas no longer occupied by the Taliban ? A: We need to look at where women were before the Taliban took power. In the mid nineties women comprised 70% of all teachers and 40% of all medical doctors and basically what the Taliban did was destroy the skill base in women's leadership in these areas and confine women to smaller and smaller spaces. What is happening now is that women are coming out of those restricted spaces but they have not reached where they were in 1996. Yesterday for the first time in five years 200 local Afghan women held a demonstration for their rights in Kabul. All they are asking for are basic services, the right of decision-making and some control over their lives. Q: What is the United Nations doing to improve the future lives of Afghan women ? A: The UN has always been there for the women as it is committed to women's rights and women's security. Even in the hardest times [during the Taliban regime] many UN agencies have been trying to support the work of vulnerable women such as women-headed households, widows and women who have found themselves in refugee camps. But the UN has not been able to maintain the spaces that women had even in terms of employment within the organisation and many of the women have had to work from home. But now what has been very exciting is that the UN has said very strongly that women need to have a stake in whatever new systems of governance are put in place and to participate in government structures and administration. Work to help women revolves around three different areas. First, is the humanitarian and development side. We need to immediately provide basic needs and services to women in terms of food, personal security, shelter, medical care and education as only five percent of women are literate. As we are putting all these services in place we need to train women in the delivery of these services but it is equally important that attention is given to women's economic security as well. Second, we need to ensure that women become visible in terms of decision-making processes on the political side, which is a much harder struggle. If women are not in key positions in critical numbers at the local, national and international level many of the concerns in the humanitarian and development area will not be addressed. UNIFEM brought an Afghan woman to New York to meet members of the Security Council and she made these points very well. She said that just because we are veiled does not mean that we don't have a voice, just because we are veiled it doesn't mean we are not leaders. She said that women were the ones to resist oppression to provide schools when they were illegal and to provide healthcare when it was difficult. And yet when the international community look for leaders they see the warlords but do not recognise the role played by women to hold communities together. This is a very important point. The third area we need to focus on is building local women's capacity and leadership. They cannot do this alone. They need the international community's support. As well as supporting their leadership structures at a variety of levels we need to expose them to other people's learning experiences in situations such as Kosovo and Bosnia. UNIFEM, along with NGO partners, is convening a summit for Afghan women in Brussels from 5-6 December. We are bringing about 50 women's groups together to try to forge a common women's agenda and also to try to identify some leaders who would like to participate in some of the decision-making processes. Shortly afterwards, there will be another meeting which will bring together women leaders from Afghanistan, neighbouring countries and other war-affected regions to build a community of support for women's leadership in Afghanistan. It will also help to bring in Afghan women's voices and perspectives into a dialogue with the various stakeholders, including the UN system and donor governments. Q: To what extent are women involved in the UN-brokered Afghan meeting in Germany next week ? A: I have just been told informally that three women are being considered by various delegations. But I think it is important to use the leverage of the UN system to ensure that more women participate in such meetings. Q: The leaders of the Northern Alliance have told UN officials in Kabul that women will be able to participate fully in Afghan society. Do you take such statements seriously ? A: We need to take whatever comments leaders make in support of women very seriously and really hold people accountable for what they actually say. Therefore, we need to make sure that all these factions put women in their delegations. Q: To what extent does the UN take local traditions into account in its programming on women's issues such as, for example, wearing the burqa which is for many a symbol of repression ? A: We respect all traditions so what we are doing is to allow women the choice. We are interested in protecting women's security and rights and it is up to the women themselves to determine what this means. Even if women are veiled it doesn't mean that they are not leaders. The role of women in Afghanistan over the past century is marked by a pattern of "one step forwards and two-steps backwards." Past attempts to implement drastic reform programmes provoked an increase of religious hardliners culminating in the radical practices of the Taliban. So any attempt to strengthen women must rest on an analysis of past experiences of women's rights in Afghanistan and the dynamics that have shaped success or failure.