Women For Afghan Women

Afghan Women Rising

WAW

Afghan Women Key to Sustainable Peace in Afghanistan

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Published in The Hill, 08/16/2018 By Manizha Naderi and Megan E. Corrado For years, the United States has engaged in backchannel talks with the Taliban to little avail. However, news that principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Alice Wells, met with the militant group in Doha last month represents the latest wave of diplomatic efforts to address America’s longest running war. In this endeavor, the U.S. empowered one if its most experienced diplomats, at once forcing the Taliban to confer with a woman as a condition for dealing with the U.S. directly, while simultaneously demonstrating leadership in the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for incorporating women into all facets of peacebuilding processes. These successive waves of women’s leadership in dialogue with the Taliban — and the latter’s acquiescence to participation — may signal a relaxation of their hardline positions toward …

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Brought Together by Pain, 3 Girls Forced Into Marriage Have New Dreams

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Published in The New York Times, 10/6/2017 By Rod Nordland Kabul, Afghanistan — Afghanistan is a place where all too often a young girl’s dreams die. But not always. So it has been with three Afghan friends, whose unrelated cases were all so awful that they are painful to talk about even now that the three are young women, years after the trauma. Each of them escaped a forced marriage as a child, is lucky to be alive, and knows it. Each of them has big dreams — despite what has happened, and because of it. For one of them, Gul Meena, 18, dreams have already started coming true. Last month she boarded a flight from Kabul to Östersund, Sweden, via Istanbul and Stockholm, accompanied by an American lawyer. It was Gul Meena’s first time in an airplane, first time out of her country, first time that, as she put it before, “I will be free.” Gul Meena’s first dream was to escape Afghanistan. Her next was to have a television set in her room. She said she wanted to see how her …

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Some Afghan Children Find an Alternative to Jail — for Now

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Published in The New York Times, 12/30/2017 By Rod Nordland Kabul, Afghanistan — On visiting days in the women’s wing of Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul, Najia Nasim would regularly see a little girl named Dahlia waiting outside her mother’s cell, standing up straight, wearing a small backpack. Inside the backpack were all of the girl’s clothes and a few personal possessions. Ms. Nasim goes to the prison regularly to look for children who are older than 5, and thus eligible to be freed and put in one of her organization’s orphanages. These are children who are in prison only because their mothers are there, with no one else in their family willing or able to take them. Dahlia was hardly bigger than a toddler, but her mother claimed she was 5, which Ms. Nasim did not believe; 4 at most, she said. “Her mother would always say, ‘The last time when you didn’t take her, she cried all day.’ She begged me please take her,” Ms. Nasim said. Their orphanages were not equipped for children …

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Afghan Women Rising: WAW’s NYCC

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41GMzFlYoaI&t=26s Afghan Women Rising is a short video on Women for Afghan Women in the United States, and particularly our clients from the NYCC. This video shows the amazing experience with over 50 of our clients at the Women's March on January 21st, 2017 in Washington DC. The video also presents our wonderful NYCC Program Director Naheed Bahram Samadi, who provides a great overview of our programs and what WAW is all about. …

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#ByHerSide in Afghanistan

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlDYMT3b8pk&t=199s WAW’s #ByHerSide program in Afghanistan provides access to critically-needed health services including: treatment for survivors of rape or incest (including emergency reconstructive surgeries as needed); treatment for survivors of physical abuse or violence by family or community members; obstetrics and gynecological services for pregnant women (including nutritional supplements to reduce incidences of malnutrition and providing medicines such as pain relievers); and birth and after-birth services in a high-quality medical facility. …

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