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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

88% of the women are illiterate

57% are forced to marry prior to their 16th birthday. 1 in 9 women dies giving birth. they're offered in trade, just like a cow or a bushel of grain. yeah, we're REALLY making a difference.
Women's lives worse than ever
By Terri Judd
Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.
Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.
Six years after the US and Britain "freed" Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, a new report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases.
Projects started in the optimistic days of 2002 have begun to wane as the UK and its Nato allies fail to treat women's rights as a priority, workers in the country insist..........

............The banned practice of offering money for a girl is still rampant – along with exchanging her as restitution for crime, debt or dispute. With the going price for a child bride at £800 to £2,000 – as much as three years salary for a labourer – many grooms are forced to take loans or swap their sisters instead, explained Partawmina Hashemee, the director of the Afghan Women Resource Centre..................

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hear Afghanistan is one of our foreign policy success stories.

I recommend The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns . . . they're great and they will make you sad and even angrier at this backwards theocracy.

Unknown said...

i have both of those books. one at work, one at home. i'm putting off reading them. i just don't know if i can handle it.