Focus on the plight of widows

Sitting on the bare floor of her squalid home in the west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, Bibi has few options. Washing clothes for her neighbours, the 37-year-old widow can barely provide enough food to sustain her family of five. As the smell of raw sewage permeates the air, she battles to prevent a barrage of flies from waking her sleeping daughter to hours of perpetual hunger. While it is hard to imagine a worse scenario, Bibi's world has, incredibly, become just that. The owners of the house she had been living in for years were returning from Pakistan - and she was being evicted. "What am I to do? Where am I to go?" she asked IRIN. There are an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 widows in Kabul alone, most of whom lost their husbands during the last 23 years of civil war and conflict. However, with between 1.5 and two million killed altogether, that number could be in the hundreds of thousands nationwide. Ranging in age from 20 to 40, about 90 percent of widows have children. But despite the demise of the ultra-conservative Taliban, widows still face unique challenges, rendering them one of the most vulnerable groups in Afghanistan today. "While the plight of Afghan widows has improved psychologically, the main problems of finding shelter, food and income remain the same," the women's coordinator for CARE International in Afghanistan, Awadia Mohamed, told IRIN. "Indeed, in some cases they have worsened." During the five years of hard-line Taliban rule, widows and their families were on the receiving end of the some of the worst of the movement's fundamentalist edicts. As women could not work, go to school, or leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative, the widows in many ways were the most isolated victims of the Taliban. Many resorted to begging in the streets to get by. Some turned to prostitution. But following the fall of the Taliban last year, the political and social context in Afghanistan has changed for the better for widows. Yet basic needs for this group remain unfulfilled. According to Mohamed, after 11 September, CARE began re-evaluating the problems facing widows, noting that most of them lacked housing or legal rights to property. Many widows lived in buildings abandoned by owners who had earlier fled to Pakistan or Iran. However, as more and more refugees return, widows like Bibi now face a new and more daunting dilemma - that of where to live. "Either they have to find a new place or have more people in the same house. The houses are becoming so crowded," Mohamed said. As the legal rights of women were influenced by religion and culture, many widows had minimal opportunities for property ownership, she added. Since 1996, CARE has been at the forefront of assisting this group, working with more than 10,000 widowed households in providing health and nutritional education, as well as a large food-assistance programme funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). While CARE notes that widows theoretically now have more opportunities in Afghan society, including working outside their homes and participating in the country's development process, the living conditions this vulnerable group faces have yet to change, largely as a result of a complex set of economic, cultural and social factors. Among the main constraints facing widow-headed households today, in addition to shelter, CARE cited high illiteracy levels due to poverty and cultural reasons, family restrictions on girls travelling long distances, early marriages, a perceived low value put on education by the family, and the need for girls to take care of siblings or do domestic work. According to a CARE survey conducted in June, 52 percent of widows are earning income derived primarily from domestic work, farm labour, or self employment, such as tailoring and carpet weaving. Wages, however, are low, with monthly income averaging between US $10 and $15. Bibi, for example, barely averages 50 US cents per day. Moreover, more than 73 percent of the widows surveyed reported being in debt due to irregular incomes. Another constraint cited in the report was minimal kinship support from their home communities, despite the loss of their husbands or loved ones. Consequently, many widows remain in Kabul, where they have no social network. "The widows in rural areas fare better than those in the urban areas," Mohamed said. "The social system in rural areas usually takes care of the widows through kinship and distant relatives, but in Kabul, most of the widows have lost their kinship and community support, she explained. However, the areas of health and nutrition for widows and their families are most alarming, and which Mohamed described as "very, very poor". With limited access to food and health services, CARE found that 51 percent of widows surveyed reported being unwell, of whom 57.6 percent had fever, 13.6 percent had diarrhoea and 10 percent leishmaniasis wounds. Furthermore, calorie intake was insufficient, with most of the women and their children subsisting on little more than bread and tea, resulting in malnutrition problems and micronutrient deficiencies. Moreover, many have vitamin A deficiency and suffer from night blindness, as well as other symptoms related to inadequate nutrition. In a survey assessing the health and nutrition of widow-headed households last year, 20 percent of the children of widows were found to be malnourished, compared to four percent of children in Kabul in general. The same survey also concluded that 13 percent of widows were malnourished, compared to six percent of the women in the capital overall. Exacerbating the problem were trauma and psychological disorders. According to a recent United Nations Children's Fund report, 60 percent of children in Afghanistan were exposed to traumatising events during the conflict. In terms of current support, the CIDA has been consistently supporting over 10,000 widows and their families - or some 60,000 people - over the past five years through the Canadian government's support for the Kabul widows' feeding project. As part of the programme, each widow receives a ration of 32 kg of wheat, 4.6 kg of oil and nine kg of pulses - a ration covering half the monthly food requirement of a family of five. Commenting on the problem, the spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Kabul, Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, described the plight of widows as severe. "It is clear that despite many efforts, the situation remains very difficult for the most vulnerable households in Kabul and all across Afghanistan," he told IRIN. As part of its nationwide bakery programme since 1996, WFP has been addressing the needs of the most vulnerable households, particularly those headed by widows or the disabled. Currently operating 24 bakeries in 11 different districts of the capital, the food agency employs some 357 women, most of whom are widows. The women produce a total of 42,650 loaves of bread daily to assist 8,530 destitute families, many of whom are headed by widows. Currently, WFP monitors are in the process of registering an additional 5,000 to 5,500 vulnerable households in several districts of Kabul. "We expect to reach with this new registration around 70 percent of the urban vulnerable in Kabul - up from 40 percent," Lopez-Chicheri explained. This would allow the establishment of between 10 and 15 new women-operated bakeries, bringing employment opportunities to more than 500 widows, he added. Meanwhile, at bakery number two in district one, the women work busily, producing almost 2,000 loaves a day, and feeling a new sense of independence and pride. For 22-year-old Fazana, who lost her husband two years ago, the work helps, but much more is needed. Earning $50 a month, she still had to pay $25 a month rent, she told IRIN. Her comments illustrate the increasing importance of income-generating activities enabling widows not only to feed, house and educate their children but also to nurture valuable new skills. One CARE project is currently helping widows and their children with new sources of income, such as sewing, farming and other trades. Such work is extremely beneficial - not just for the women, but for their families as well. Another CARE project is supporting six sewing centres, where 160 widows produce uniforms for CARE-supported schools. There is also a vegetable garden project, where women work small plots of land. "They produce more [than they need], so they sell the surplus," Mohamed explained. Regarding current initiatives, CARE aims to train 2,000 widows every year in different areas, affording them a certain degree of economic activity, either through micro-credit, savings and group development, or by way of teaching them skills such as raising poultry and dairy cows, as well as tailoring and carpet weaving. "I think this is a very ambitious target," she asserted.