Oxfam: Afghan Talks Must not Bargain Away Women's Rights

Afghanistan must not sacrifice women's rights to secure peace with the Taliban as U.S.-led NATO troops pull out, the Oxfam aid group said Monday, revealing that not a single woman has taken part in talks with the militants since 2005.

The call came the day after about 50 people were killed and 60 others wounded when a suicide blast ripped through crowds at a volleyball game in the east of the country, underlining the challenges facing Afghanistan as national security forces take over from NATO troops.

It was also a week since prominent MP Shukria Barakzai narrowly escaped death in a suicide attack on her car in the latest evidence of the dangers that women face in the country.

Oxfam said in a report titled "Behind Closed Doors" that more than 20 sessions of exploratory talks between Taliban insurgents, the Afghan government and the international community since 2005 have not involved a single woman.

"There are fears that women's rights may be bargained away amid efforts to reach a peace settlement," the report said.

"Negotiations and peace talks to date have taken place predominantly behind closed doors and without women's knowledge, input or involvement.

"All parties must recognize that it is only peace efforts that include and protect women that have any chance of succeeding in the long term."

Improving women's rights after the cruelties of the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule has been a central aim of the international development program that has spent billion of dollars in Afghanistan.

But the conservative Muslim country remains a strictly patriarchal society, with women enduring routine discrimination and violence.

Under the Taliban regime, women were banned from having a job and were not allowed outside the home unless wearing an all-encompassing burqa and accompanied by a man. Education for girls was also outlawed.

President Ashraf Ghani, who came to power in September, has said he wants talks with the Taliban insurgents, and he has also stressed that he will work to bolster the status of women.

- The price of peace? - 

Many activists fear that limited progress for women's rights made since 2001 could be lost in the search for a settlement with the Taliban, who have inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan police and soldiers this year.

"With new peace talks just around the corner, it's time for the Afghan government and their Western allies to once again champion women's leading role in Afghanistan's future," Oxfam country director John Watt said.

The report said that the new government was likely to work towards a formal political process with the Taliban -- and it warned that the price of peace must not be women's rights.

"Certain rights may prove dispensable, in what are likely to be hard-fought and protracted efforts to reach a peace agreement," it said.

Hamid Karzai, president from 2001-2014, began preliminary talks with the Taliban but they collapsed acrimoniously last year in a diplomatic dispute over the militants' office in Doha, Qatar.

The Afghan constitution guarantees women equality, the right to work and the right to education, but legislation such as the flagship 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law has been poorly implemented.

NATO combat operations will finish at the end of this year, with a training and support mission taking over in 2015.