Fight against maternal mortality a priority for Afghanistan: minister

Tackling Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate, among the highest in the world, is a priority in the country where women suffer abuses ranging from forced marriage to honor killings, says Women's Affairs Minister Masooda Jalal.

More than 1,600 of every 100,000 Afghan women die giving birth. With each having on average more than six children, a woman's risk of maternal death is one in about 10, according to official statistics.

"If they lose their lives, we cannot talk of other rights so for us it is a priority that the maternal mortality rate should be decreased," Jalal told AFP in an interview.

"Each 30 minutes we lose one mother. Eighty-seven percent of these losses have been studied to be preventable due to lack of access to health services and lots of other factors," she said.

While there had been some progress in alleviating the plight of women in the country since the hardline Taliban government was removed in 2001, most women still had miserable lives, Jalal said.

"Right now it is very bad. I don't think in any other country it would be like this that women are victims of domestic violence, forced marriages, child marriage," she said.

Another phenomenon was families marrying off their children to settle disputes, including over murder or debt, and killings of women thought to have brought dishonour to their families.

Marriages were not registered, allowing a host of abuses including denial of property and inheritance rights, Jalal said.

The second priority for the ministry was education, with more than 80 percent of women illiterate, the minister said.

"For instance 60 percent of the girls within the school age seven to 13 are outside the education system due to lack of access," she said.

The Taliban, which rose to power in 1996 to end a devastating civil war carried out by commanders, stopped girls from going to school and women from working, saying it was unIslamic to educate.

The regime gained notoriety for its treatment of women, including whipping them in the street if they did not wear the all-covering burqa and denying them access to health on the basis that they should not be examined by a male doctor.

When the Taliban was removed from power, to now be waging an insurgency against the new government, the new internationally backed government adopted a constitution enshrining equal rights for Afghanistan's long-downtrodden women.

The first ever women's ministry was established, discriminatory laws were done away with, and schools and universities were reopened to women, many of whom took jobs.

"They are taking part in the economic development of the country. We have hundreds of businesswomen, we have women in parliament," Jalal said.

"These are achievements but they are not enough."

For example, only one percent of the top jobs in the government were taken by women. "Going towards equality, which is guaranteed in the constitution of Afghanistan, there is a long way left," Jalal said.

A key step in correcting the imbalance was a law being processed to eliminate violence against women, she said.

A protocol was also being circulated among ministries committing them to take steps to eliminate child marriage, she said. The law already bans marriage for girls under 16 but this is seldom enforced.

However even with these legal provisions, women's lack of access to male-dominated legal systems often meant they did not have recourse to justice, Jalal said.

A third priority for the government was to encourage women to play a greater role in society, she said. Even in the capital Kabul, only men go to cinemas and shows and few women drive.

Jalal last week led about 40 women to pray in a mosque, which women rarely do in Afghanistan, saying she hoped it would encouraged more of them to leave their homes to worship.

She also oversaw the transport ministry's signing of an agreement to reserve 30 percent of seats on public buses for and to change the attitude of bus drivers who regularly fail to stop if there are only women waiting.

Jalal said resistance from men in patriarchal Afghanistan could be expected to the changes her ministry was bringing about with help from groups such as the United Nations.

"The one who will be losing power will not like it," she said. "But it doesn't matter -- the goal for us is to have half of the citizens of this country getting their equal rights."

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AFP 072016 GMT 03 06

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