Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-14-Speech-3-187"
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"en.20011114.8.3-187"2
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"Madam President, there is a taboo word that I have not heard mentioned in this hour of debate and which I do not hear in the negotiation meetings held in Rome or Peshawar, in Islamabad or New York. It is a taboo which I, or rather we, intend to confront: women’s participation, the substantial participation of women in the provisional government of Afghanistan.
The United Nations Secretary General hopes for an ethnically balanced transitional government. The Council, in the person of Mrs Durant, has told us she hopes for a fair and lasting composition. But what justice are we talking about? What balance are we talking about? Millions of Afghan women have not only been the primary victims but have also been the major architects of non-violent opposition all these years throughout the world. You know them: they are the women from Negar and RAWA; they have been here in the European Parliament; they were the ones who ran the country before the Taliban. They made up 40 per cent of the medical staff, 50 per cent of the teachers, 70 per cent of the administration, while the men were off making war. Yet around the negotiating table I only see men with beards, some longer, some shorter, but I have not seen any of those fantastic women we have met any more.
Well, I know very well that I will be greeted with smiles and grins everywhere. I know very well how I felt when faced by those smiles in ’97 and ’98, when this Parliament and the Commission were, to my knowledge, the only institutions that supported the campaign
in 1997. This courage of ours – of yours, ladies and gentlemen – I believe should continue. Now, enough of the gossip, the discrimination, the exclamations of ‘women, poor things’! No, enough of that! We want Afghan women to take on conspicuous political responsibility in the reconstruction of their country in the transitional government.
I know this will not be enough; I know public opinion needs to be mobilised. Therefore on 24 November we are promoting a day of fasting throughout the world, a world satyagraha, precisely so that women can at last form a part of this provisional government.
I hope this proposal of ours will not be received with the usual derision. Often, those who concern themselves seriously with human rights have much greater vision, application and objectivity than those who always believe they know it all and think that the world today can go on simply with the traditional
. Things are not like that. The human side, people are the architects of their futures. What future can there be, however, without half of the population? Therefore: 24 November, world satyagraha day, so that women can form part of this provisional government."@en1
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"‘A flower for the women of Kabul’"1
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