Afghanistan – Status of Widows – Issues, Challenges & Options

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Status of
Widows in Afghanistan:

Issues, Challenges and Options[1][1]

 

By:

DR. MASSOUDA JALAL

Founding Chairperson, Jalal Foundation and

Former Minister of Women, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

 

 

1.        
Overview[2][2]

 

Afghanistan is one of the world’s most prolific producers of orphans
and widows. The number of widows in Afghanistan is estimated to be from 600,000 to two million (2M), one
of the highest in the world when analyzed against the overall number of Afghan
females falling within the reproductive age bracket of 15 to 49 years old.  Some 30 to 50 thousand of them are said to be
residing in the capital city of Kabul and the rest are scattered elsewhere in the country.  On the average, they were widowed at a very
young age of 20 to 30 years old — mainly as a consequence of early marriage,
betrothal to exceedingly old men, deaths of men in armed conflict, and the
generally low life expectancy of Afghans (45 years old).

 

A typical Afghan widow is around 35
years old. Around 94 percent of them are illiterate and an estimated 90 percent
have 3 to 8 children/off springs.  The
average period within which a woman remains a widow in Afghanistan is 10 years. Given the lack of employable skills, dire
economic options, poor social support, stigmatization, and the extremely low
status of women in society, Afghan widows and their families wallow in extreme
deprivation and are among the most vulnerable citizens of the country. Studies
reveal that they are at least five times more prone to oppression, malnutrition
and violence. 

 

 

II. Issues and challenges

 

Widowhood in Afghanistan is like a death sentence, or worse.  A 2006 report of UNIFEM indicates that 65
percent of the widows living in Kabul had attempted to commit suicide at least once. Their
dismal situation is an outcome of interlinked socio-cultural, economic,
political, and human development factors that evolved through  long period of political rifts and armed
conflict, giving birth to a life that is perhaps the worst possible the world
could imagine for widows, to wit:

 

·        
Negative
socio-cultural factors – Afghanistan is a highly patriarchal society whose norms, beliefs,
practices and traditions are shaped by extremist values of fundamentalists
which regard women as less than a human being. 
Afghan women are generally viewed as ‘un-equals’ whose existence is
circumscribed by their relationships with men and have no social identity of
their own. Before marriage, they are daughters to their fathers; and once
married, they assume the identity of a wife to their husband. When a husband
dies, the wife’s life suffers a major de-stabilizing shock as it marks the
sudden loss of her social identity, source of protection and support, and basis
for functioning in society. Widowhood in Afghanistan is like a ‘death sentence’
because it instantly changes society’s perception and attitude towards a widow
as a harbinger of disgrace and bad luck, a liability, a drain to family
resources, and no more than an economic object whose energies could be
exploited in slave-like manner[3][3].  Afghan widows are either taken back by their
original family or the relatives of their husband. Otherwise, they wallow in
wretchedness as street beggars. For many widows, death is a sweeter option.

 

Among the
major factors that contribute to the disadvantage of Afghan widows, negative
socio-cultural factors are the most pernicious, most recalcitrant, and most
difficult to address.  As long as society
is dominated by men with values that are antithetical to democracy, human
rights and gender equality, Afghan widows’ empowerment would remain arduous and
elusive.

 

·        
Economic
factors – Afghanistan is one of the least developed countries of the world with
a 35.8% national poverty rate and a Poverty Gap Index of 7.9. One third of
urban residents require continuous food assistance and the figure is much
higher for rural areas where 80 percent of the population lives[4][4]. Serious
economic deprivation exacerbates the social disadvantage of widows.  Under the custody of her ex-husband’s family,
a widow is most likely abused as overworked, unpaid, and under-fed economic
laborers and household slaves[5][5]. Often, they
are sexually violated and subjected to physical violence. In the household
competition for very scarce economic resources, and given the overall lack of
economic opportunities in the country, many widows are left with marginal or no
resources at all to subsist in humanely possible way. Combined with negative
socio-cultural factors that look at widows as passive victims, general dearth
of economic options makes advocacy for widows’ empowerment tenuous and
unattractive.

 

Apart from
these, it is not unusual for Afghan widows to lose their inheritance entitlements
to male in-laws. Denial of property rights – mostly as a result of their
limited contributions and control over household income – easily pushes widows
and their children to the brink of penury. Without properties, education,
skills, and connections, and given society’s tight restrictions to Afghan
women’s mobility in public, it is not unusual for widows to stride into
absolute poverty than into economic productivity. 

 

·        
 Political
factors – The pursuit of women’s empowerment and gender equality in
Afghanistan sits in a political time bomb.  As the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of
international security support draws to a close, Taliban fighters have started
to return to the mainstream of national life and Taliban leaders begin to receive
political concessions from government. 
Against this backdrop, Taliban-style cruelty and criminalities to women
have re-surfaced, resulting in increased resurgence of female-directed
extra-judicial executions, assassinations of activists, murders, beheadings,
and honor killings.  Given this context,
the plight of Afghan widows will continue to take a back seat. The attention of
government to women’s empowerment has dramatically declined and this is not
about to change in the next five years. 

 

Except for
Article 53 of the Constitution, which articulates a guarantee that the rights and privileges as well as
assistance to women without caretakers and needy orphans will be ensured, Afghanistan does not have a clear policy on widows.  The National Action Plan for the Women of
Afghanistan (NAPWA) recognizes the disadvantage faced by widows and the
Afghanistan National Development Strategy explicitly acknowledges that widows
are among the most vulnerable people of the country.  Yet, all these policy instruments remain
un-elaborated and un-implemented. Many of the interventions for widows are done
by non-government organizations and international agencies. Due to the enormity
of constraints faced by programming in the country, many of the interventions for
widows were palliative, un-sustained, and detached from overall priorities of
government. 

 

·       
Human
development factors – Years of
war and the Taliban’s policy of prohibiting female education left behind a
female population that is overwhelmingly illiterate, contributing to the
stunting of their potentials to live a full and satisfying life. Thus, Afghan
widows are without economic skills, politically disempowered, physically
unhealthy, and excluded from the mainstream of social and political lives.  Worse, more of them live with emotional
trauma due to the terrors of war and the loss of husbands, relatives,
properties and social connections. 

 

Under the
Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled, widows and their families
receive welfare support.  However, such
interventions do not represent an empowering and enduring response to the
situation. There are evidences, however, that appropriate interventions enable
Afghan widows to rise above their dismal situation. A number of international
organizations and NGOs implemented projects whose results proved that an
integrated approach to widow empowerment, such as skills development, building
of support groups, livelihood opportunities, counseling, and welfare support restore
their social functioning and enable them to get out of their sordid
predicament. 

 

III. OPTIONS

 

We agree that the initiative to call for a separate UN resolution on the
empowerment of widows all over the world stands as the most ideal broad step at
the moment.  Afghan women will benefit a
lot from the surge of international pressure that such resolution would
elicit.  We have seen from the experience
on the CEDAW, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and many other
international instruments that there is tremendous power in international
solidarity. We therefore support this conference and all other conferences
leading to such UN resolution and we are ready to do our part in advancing this
agenda in every way possible.

 

Toward this end, we will mobilize our networks, lobby with our government
and our international NGOs and diplomatic corps in our country, educate the
public about the plight of widows, prepare case studies and gather statistics,
and work with media to bring widows’ concerns into the realm of public
policy.  Solidarity and consolidated
power will stand as our best defense against the indifference of policy and
decision makers. In Afghanistan, there are splintered groups of widows that we could be
brought together and empowered to pursue varied forms of advocacy.  They need to be engaged, positioned in the
frontline, and given skills to speak for themselves and move institutions and
officials to action. They need to be recognized as main stakeholders of the
peace process and must have a voice on the terms of the peace negotiations. We
also need to engage organizations that are dedicated to the empowerment of
widows because they have the experiences, resources and knowledge that could
bolster our activism.

 

The widows’ network should be aided in adopting a common platform and
framework that could be pursued at the international, regional and country
levels beginning with very strategic and foundational measures such as
institutionalization of national mechanism dedicated to widows’ empowerment,
conduct of studies on the situation of widows, adoption of a national law on
widows, and allocation of specific funds/budgets for programs and projects
promoting widows’ empowerment. Since the plight of widows is differentiated by
contexts, we need to be able to harness the resources and support of the more
advantaged widows to help uplift the situation of those who are not, in the
spirit of global solidarity and sisterhood.

 

Unfortunately, Afghanistan will have to pursue the advocacy for widows’ empowerment
in a highly volatile and challenged political context.  This is not to say, nevertheless, that we
cannot do anything.  Back home, there are
options that we will try to pursue to strengthen the global campaign for
widows’ empowerment, such as:

 

·     Establishing baseline information on
widows – It is
important to have a more accurate picture of widowhood in our country because
these will inform advocacy, policy making and programming.  We will therefore try to put together all
existing statistics and studies on Afghan widows, their needs and issues, the
strengths and weaknesses of policy and program measures, available mainstream
resources that could be channeled to widows and factors that stand in the way
of uplifting their situation, as well as researches and case studies about
their lives. Based on this, we will develop and disseminate information
materials that could be used by media and other partners in our advocacy and we
will input our baseline information to any regional, sub-regional or global
database that will be established in this regard;

 

·     Multiplying champions and raising
accountability for widows’ empowerment – We find it important to increase the number of influential people who
could champion the rights of widows in the realms of law, policy, and action.
We need to go beyond ourselves and get other people to own the issues of Afghan
widows and recognize that they have a role in transforming their lives. If the
government recognizes its responsibilities to the casualties of war, it is
equally responsible in rebuilding the lives that were destroyed because of war.
We will therefore facilitate dialogues among legislators, policy makers and
widows to generate organic information that could support policy and action and
to motivate as many ‘influentials’ as possible to advance widows’ empowerment.
Along this line, we will facilitate the drafting of a law on widows and use it
as centerpiece agenda for such dialogues. 
We will also bring together institutions and organizations mandated to
improve the lives of widow to reflect on the effectiveness of their
interventions and work together for greater impacts and synergy.

 

·     Lobbying for greater resources for
widows – Even if the
government is engaged in a peace process, the reality is that attacks and
killings by Talibans continue. This means more threats of widowhood for wives,
and greater number of children running the risk of becoming orphans. We believe
that the time to allocate funds for veterans, widows and orphans is not after
the war but before the war.  The budget
for the peace process of my country needs to be re-examined to ensure adequate
and timely release of financial and other resources for widows and orphans. If
the government is giving huge sums of money to returning Talibans who were
responsible for the destruction of many lives, it should give equally huge
amount of money to those whose lives were ruined by war. This is a platform
that we will advocate with high level candidates in the coming elections and an
argument that we will use to motivate more women to run for public office.

 

IV. CONCLUSION

 

Afghanistan is one of the very few countries in the world where the
life expectancy of women is lower than that of men. Therefore, if only war
could be stopped and peace would be given a chance to reign in our lives, Afghanistan will no longer be a major contributor to the growing
statistics of the world’s widows.  May
this Conference find fruits in the collective wisdom, commitments, and peace
efforts of all of us.  Let the candles
that will illuminate the widows’ journey towards empowerment be born in this
conference.  Bottom of Form