Women want new constitution to reflect their needs

As tentative steps are taken towards nation building in Afghanistan, women are calling for full participation in the formulation of the nation's new constitution. "If we have a good constitution but we cannot implement it in a good way, this means the country will not go in the right direction," Afghan Women’s Affairs Minister Habiba Surabi told IRIN on Tuesday at a meeting on women and constitutional reform in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "The newly drafted constitution is taking women into consideration, but my concern is on its implementation," she said. Surabi called for rapid efforts towards bringing about disarmament and setting up a national army as prerequisites to the successful implementation of the new constitution. However, she pointed out that there was a lack of knowledge on what a constitution is and of how people, particularly women, could benefit and be properly protected by it. According to Mahbooba Hoqooqmal, the minister of state for women's affairs, Afghan women have been suffering from two substantial problems. "Women's illiteracy rate is much more higher than [that of] men," Hoqooqmal, who is also the government's adviser with 35 years experience in judicial affairs, told IRIN. The second problem was that "we have witnessed that in many cases courts have not taken a fair decision on women as [opposed] to men", she said, adding that the country needed to establish legal and judicial centres for women, where they could obtain and help towards gaining their legal rights. Hoqooqmal urged the constitutional commission to focus on mother and child health, inasmuch as the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. "The new constitution should consider social and health insurance for women, if not now but at least for the future," she said. "We have always had good laws on paper, but this time we want them to be implemented," she added. Currently, Afghanistan operates by the 1964 constitution. Under the Bonn Agreement, a constitution drafting commission was established last October by the Afghan transitional government. The commission has prepared a first draft to be to be presented to a constitutional commission, which will finalise the draft and submit it to the Constitutional Loya Jirga, or grand tribal assembly by August 2003. The Afghan government told IRIN that the constitution-making process was incorporating women's needs and rights. "It is well understood that for this constitution to be truly representative of the people of Afghanistan, it cannot exclude over half of the population," Farooq Wardak, the director of the constitutional commission's secretariat, said, noting that women had a key role to play in the constitution-making process. The current Afghan constitution-making process has support from the UN and donor agencies, and the role of women in it is a top priority, representatives say. "The UN agency in one or another way is involved in the rehabilitation and reconstruction process of postwar Afghanistan, and women's participation is on the top of the agenda," Najia Zewari, a programme officer with the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told IRIN, calling on all involved agencies to assist women to realise their rights.