In a rare victory for Afghan women, Kabul to include mothers’ name on IDs

A man waves an Afghan flag during Independence Day celebrations in Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP/File)
Short Url
Updated 07 September 2020
Follow

In a rare victory for Afghan women, Kabul to include mothers’ name on IDs

  • Follows concerted campaign by 28-year-old graduate to change decades-old law

KABUL: Laleh Osmany says that she was shocked when one evening, three years ago, she received an invitation from a renowned writer to attend a religious ceremony in honor of his wife who had died a few days earlier.

While the invitation card had his name on it, it did not include any details of the woman who had been his life partner for several years.

“I could not understand the logic behind this and why a renowned writer and teacher like him felt ashamed of mentioning his wife’s name on the card, which was for an occasion dedicated to her,” Osmany told Arab News by phone from the western Afghan city of Herat.

The next day, the 28-year-old graduate of Islamic law from Herat University decided to launch the #Whereismyname social media campaign to call out Afghanistan’s “misogynistic” culture.

A crucial part of her efforts, Osmany said, was to have authorities include the names of mothers next to those of fathers on all national IDs, especially for women who were divorced, had lost their husbands to the decades-old Afghan war or whose spouses were missing or had disappeared.

“They faced tough times sorting out legal issues such as the right to inheritance, guardianship or issuance of passports for themselves or their children in the absence of a father,” Osmany said.

After the hashtag went viral, and armed with a flood of support from social media users both at home and abroad, Osmany says her efforts finally bore fruit when the Afghan government — after several days of deliberations with religious scholars — amended the census law and accepted the proposal last week.

“I was thrilled to see the amount of support people showed for the cause, both from within the country and outside. I’m really happy that our campaign and push for a right cause, which has no contradiction with Islam, our culture and tradition, has finally been accepted,” Osmany said.

The next step is for the parliament to endorse the move which, according to several lawmakers, could happen as soon as it resumes after the summer break.

“We also joined the #Whereismyname campaign and talked about it in parliament, and to our constituencies who welcomed it greatly. Both men and women in the parliament and outside support this to a large extent,” Fawzia Naseriyar, a legislator from Kabul, told Arab News.

It is a rare win for women’s rights activists in the deeply conservative and male-dominated country, where due to deeply ingrained taboos a woman’s name is often missing from her wedding invitation or even her grave.

In public, young children and, at times, adult men, often get into fights if someone even mentions the name of their mother or sister — an act which is seen as an attempt to bring dishonor and shame to the family.

According to estimates shared by the Statistics and Information Authority, women make up 49 percent of the total population of 32.9 million.

And while there are 68 women in the 250-member parliament and several serve as cabinet members, a majority have struggled for years to assert themselves as legal guardians of their children, both in government offices or to carry out business transactions in their names, in the absence of a man.

The government’s endorsement is amid preparations to hold the much-awaited intra-Afghan talks with the Taliban to end more than 40 years of war and facilitate the total departure of US-led troops from Afghanistan by next spring.

The Taliban banned women from seeking education or procuring jobs during its five-year rule until it was toppled from power in late 2001. It has, however, pledged to uphold women’s rights as part of the peace process and negotiations.

Mary Akrami, the chairperson of Afghanistan’s Women Network, described Osmany’s efforts and the government’s endorsement as a “positive step toward establishing women’s identity.”

“Even if you go to graves, you hardly find the names of a deceased woman on the tombstone. Women have been born here obscurely and will die obscurely too,” she told Arab News.

Second Vice President Mohammad Sawar Danesh, who worked to change the law, agrees and said in a statement last week that the endorsement was “a big step toward gender equality and the realization of women’s rights” in the country.

The move has been applauded by the US and British ambassadors to Kabul who called it a “significant boost for women’s status and rights in Afghanistan.”

Osmany, however, said that the endorsement is just the first step in what could be a long and arduous journey. 

She should know. Since launching the campaign, she has faced challenges and “received threats from unknown people,” asking her to abandon the cause. Several have openly protested against it. 

Irfan Talash, a school student, mocked the move, saying that the government’s acceptance of the proposal was “as if it had managed to resolve all other problems in Afghanistan and the inclusion of mothers’ names on the ID was its last problem.”

Experts said that while it may be a small step for women in the country, it is a giant one for gender equality in Afghanistan.

“It’s a very positive development without any doubt, but there are some conservatives and traditionalists who may oppose the idea,” Taj Mohammad, a former journalist and currently an analyst, told Arab News.

Nasratullah Haqpal, another expert on regional affairs, disagrees and said that Kabul had accepted the proposal to “appease America and Europe.”

“Afghan women do not rejoice with the inclusion of their names on ID but will want to see the end of blood-shedding of their children. They want nothing more.”


Russia says captured key town in eastern Ukraine

Updated 2 min 3 sec ago
Follow

Russia says captured key town in eastern Ukraine

MOSCOW: Russian forces have captured the town of Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry said on Monday, in a key advance after months of steady gains in the area.
Russian units “have fully liberated the town of Kurakhove — the biggest settlement in southwestern Donbas,” the ministry said on Telegram.


Canada PM Trudeau to announce resignation as early as Monday – reports

Updated 5 min 35 sec ago
Follow

Canada PM Trudeau to announce resignation as early as Monday – reports

  • Unclear whether Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as PM until new leader is selected, says report 
  • Polls show Liberals will badly lose to the Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce as early as Monday that he will resign as Liberal Party Leader, The Globe and Mail reported on Sunday, citing three sources.
The sources told the Globe and Mail that they don’t know definitely when Trudeau will announce his plans to leave but said they expect it will happen before a key national caucus meeting on Wednesday.
The Canadian prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
It remains unclear whether Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as prime minister until a new leader is selected, the report added.
Trudeau took over as Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was in deep trouble and had been reduced to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.
Trudeau’s departure would leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.
His resignation is likely to spur fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years.
The prime minister has discussed with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc whether he would be willing to step in as interim leader and prime minister, one source told the newspaper, adding that this would be unworkable if LeBlanc plans to run for the leadership.


South Korea’s military says North Korea fired missile into eastern sea

Updated 06 January 2025
Follow

South Korea’s military says North Korea fired missile into eastern sea

  • The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was fired from an area near Pyongyang
  • Seoul denounces the launch as a provocation that poses a serious threat on the Korean Peninsula

SEOUL: North Korea on Monday fired a ballistic missile that flew 1,100 kilometers before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, South Korea’s military said, extending its heightened weapons testing activities into 2025 weeks before Donald Trump returns as US president.
The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was fired from an area near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and that the launch preparations were detected in advance by the US and South Korean militaries. It denounced the launch as a provocation that poses a serious threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
The joint chiefs said the military was strengthening its surveillance and defense posture in preparation for possible additional launches and sharing information on the missile with the United States and Japan.
The launch came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Seoul for talks with South Korean allies over the North Korean nuclear threat and other issues.
Blinken’s visit comes amid political turmoil in South Korea following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law decree and subsequent impeachment by parliament last month, which experts say puts the country at a disadvantage in getting a steady footing with Trump ahead of his return to the White House.
In a year-end political conference, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to implement the “toughest” anti-US policy and criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to strengthen security cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo, which he described as a “nuclear military bloc for aggression.”
North Korean state media did not specify Kim’s policy plans or mention any specific comments about Trump. During his first term, Trump met Kim three times for talks on the North’s nuclear program.
Many experts, however, say a quick resumption of Kim-Trump summitry is unlikely as Trump would first focus on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. North Korea’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to revive diplomacy, experts say.
Before his presidency faltered over the ill-conceived power grab, Yoon worked closely with US President Joe Biden to expand joint military exercises, update nuclear deterrence strategies and strengthen trilateral security cooperation with Tokyo.


Indonesia launches free meals program to feed children and pregnant women to fight stunting

Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

Indonesia launches free meals program to feed children and pregnant women to fight stunting

  • Many children are malnourished and promise is to provide free school lunches and milk as part of a longer-term strategy to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generati

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s new government started an ambitious $28 million project Monday to feed nearly 90 million children and pregnant women to fight malnutrition and stunting although critics question whether the nationwide program is affordable.
The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on a campaign promise by President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the nation of more than 282 million people and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. He said the program aimed to fight the stunting of growth that afflicts of 21.5 percent of Indonesian children younger than 5 and would raise the earnings of farmers and the value of their harvest.
Subianto has pledged to accelerate GDP growth to 8 percent from 5 percent now.
In his inauguration speech in October, Subianto said many children are malnourished and his promise to provide free school lunches and milk to 83 million students at more than 400,000 schools across the country is part of a longer-term strategy to develop the nation’s human resources to achieve a “Golden Indonesia” generation by 2045.
“Too many of our brothers and sisters are below the poverty line, too many of our children go to school without breakfast and do not have clothes for school,” Subianto said.
Subianto’s signature program, which had included free milk, could cost upward of 450 trillion rupiah ($28 billion). He said his team had made the calculations to run such a program, and “We are capable,” he asserted.
The government’s target is to reach 19.47 million schoolchildren and pregnant women in 2025 with a budget of 71 trillion rupiah ($4.3 billion) so as to keep the annual deficit under a legislated ceiling of 3 percent of GDP, said Dadan Hindayana, the head of the newly formed National Nutrition Agency.
Hindayana said the money would buy an estimated 6.7 million tons of rice, 1.2 million tons of chicken, 500,000 tons of beef, 1 million tons of fish, vegetable and fruit, and 4 million kiloliters of milk, and at least 5,000 kitchens would be set up across the country.
On Monday, a truck carrying about 3,000 meal portions arrived before lunch at SD Cilangkap 08, a primary school in the Jakarta satellite city of Depok. The 740 students were provided plates containing rice, stir-fried vegetables, tempeh, stir-fried chicken and oranges.
“We send a team to each school to facilitate the meal distribution to students every day,” Hindayana said, adding that the program will provide one meal per day for each student from early childhood education to senior high school levels, covering a third of the daily caloric needs for children, with the government providing the meals at no cost to recipients.
But the populist program has drawn criticism from investors and analysts, ranging from conflation with the interests of industrial lobby groups or the sheer scale of the logistics required, to the burden on Indonesia’s state finances and economy.
Economic researcher from the Center of Economic and Law Studies, Nailul Huda, said with Indonesia’s tight fiscal condition, state finances are not strong enough to support the fiscal burden and this will lead to additional state debt.
“That is not comparable to the effect of free meals program which can also be misdirected,” Huda said, “The burden on our state budget is too heavy if it is forced to reach 100 percent of the target recipients, and it will be difficult for Prabowo’s government to achieve the economic growth target of 8 percent.”
He warned it could also worsen the external balance of payments for the country, which is already a major importer of rice, wheat, soybeans, beef and dairy products.
But Reni Suwarso, the director of Institute for Democracy, Security and Strategic Studies said the stunting rate in Indonesia is still far from the target of a 14 percent reduction in 2024.
According to the 2023 Indonesian Health Survey, the national stunting prevalence was 21.5 percent, down around 0.8 percent compared to the previous year. The United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF estimated one in 12 Indonesian children younger than 5 are wasted while one in five are stunted.
Wasting refers to low weight for the child’s height, while stunting refers to low height for the child’s age. Both conditions are caused by malnourishment.
“That’s so bad and must be solved!” Suwarso said, “Child malnourishment have severe consequences, threatening the health and long-term development of infants and young children throughout this nation.”


More than 260 Rohingya refugees arrive in Indonesia

Updated 06 January 2025
Follow

More than 260 Rohingya refugees arrive in Indonesia

  • The mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar
  • Latest group of refugees arrived on a beach in the region’s town of West Peureulak

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: More than 260 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, arrived in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Aceh after floating at sea for days, an official said Monday.
The mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar and thousands risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
An East Aceh official, Iskandar – who like many Indonesians goes by one name – said this latest group of refugees arrived on a beach in the region’s town of West Peureulak on Sunday night around 10:25 p.m. local time (1525 GMT Sunday).
“There are 264 of them – 117 men and 147 women,” Iskandar said Monday, adding that in the group, around 30 were children.
He said they had initially been on two boats, one of which had sunk off the coast while the second managed to move closer to shore.
They could then walk to the shore when the tide was low, he said.
“They told me they were rejected in Malaysia,” Iskandar said, adding that the local government has not decided where to move the Rohingya refugees.
Rohingya arrivals in Indonesia tend to follow a cyclical pattern, slowing during the stormy months and picking back up when sea conditions calm down.
In November, more than 100 refugees were rescued after their boat sank off the coast of East Aceh.
In October, 152 Rohingya refugees were finally brought ashore after being anchored for days off the coast of South Aceh district while officials decided whether to let them land.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and says it cannot be compelled to take in refugees from Myanmar, calling instead on neighboring countries to share the burden and resettle the Rohingya who arrive on its shores.
Many Acehnese, who have memories of decades of bloody conflict themselves, are sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Muslims.
But others say their patience has been tested, claiming the Rohingya consume scarce resources and occasionally come into conflict with locals.