Afghan Women

EDM number 337 in 2001-02, proposed by Joan Ruddock on 31/10/2001.

That this House, mindful that ongoing discussions involving the UK Government, the US administration, the EU and the United Nations on the possible form of a post-Taliban government, have laid stress on a balance of tribes and ethnic groupings; is aware that UN Special Advisor on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, is tasked with talking to all interested parties and up to 1,000 male power brokers are already vying with each other for power in any administration; calls on the Government to note that according to the Inter Parliamentary Union, women in Afghanistan were given the right to vote in 1965 and that four women were elected to parliament that year and seven in 1988, that from the 1950s women and girls in Kabul and in many other parts of the country attended co-educational schools; notes that until they were banned from work by the Taliban, 70 per cent. of teachers and 40 per cent. of doctors were women and over half of university students were women; believes that it is only the brutal and systematic repression by the Taliban regime that has made women invisible in Afghanistan; calls on the international community not to collude in their continuing invisibility; and calls on the UK Government to do everything in its power to ensure that representatives of Afghan women are included at every stage of planning for a post-Taliban government.

This motion has been signed by a total of 99 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.