Due to risk factors caused by war over the last three decades, the incidence of very young girls that are married away by families has been high. Reversing this must be an enormous challenge before Afghanistan’s society. Your views please…

As I said the Afghan government is committed to improve women’s status in all spheres of life be it health, social, politics or economic. Despite the challenges that still hamper women progress, things have dramatically changed for women. Afghan government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women in 2003 which automatically repeals all sort of erroneous practices against women and Afghan government along with international NGO’s as part of their efforts for protecting women’s rights, have been raising awareness among people to do away with practices that violate women’s rights. Reversing this overnight is very difficult task but Afghanistan is making steady progress in this regard.

What steps are being taken to help Afghanistan’s 1.5 million widows, most of them under the age of 35?

Decades of imposed war in Afghanistan has left large number of war widows. To help this widows the Afghan government is paying a monthly allowance to the wives of demised soldiers and conducts vocational training program with the support of some NGOs to make the widows self-sustaining.