WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP: GIVE WOMEN A VOICE

18TH ANNIVERSARY NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, NYC

Ms. Patricia Lalonde

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010

"It's a great honor for me to be here, and to have the opportunity to speak in front of so many women at precisely the moment when the United Nations summit on the Millenium Development Goals is putting emphasis on the issue of women. These issues are mainly education, health and access to water, which are necessary for life and dignity. But the concerns of women go beyond these to the protection of their basic human rights. And if there is one place in the world where the issue of the dignity of women and their rights is so crucial, it is Afghanistan.

Our mothers fought for equality and our generation benefits from these strong women. It's a duty for us to promote equality and help our sisters all around the world in poor countries and in countries at war. You know that being a woman is a difficult task as we usually have the additional responsibilities of taking care of the family and educating our children.

I am myself a mother of 6 children, but I also worked as a business woman for 10 years in journalism, and was involved in politics for a few years. But my main commitment was to devote myself to human rights. I could not accept that women and children were suffering and I had the feeling that I could do something to help.

I was in charge of "Passport for Freedom" in the European Parliament. Even though it is not a real national passport, it was created as a political instrument to help political refugees and to help women victims of injustices in the world.

This passport was created by European MP's and a committee was established to look at human rights victims and to select some to whom this passport would be given. It gave notice to those who abused power that the European Union was keeping an eye on their behavior. For example, we provided a passport for a Nigerian woman who was condemned to death by stoning. We did the same for a young Afghan woman.

At the same time, I was involved in many NGOs such as the Iranian one called MOHA, working with a wonderful woman, Fariba Hachroudi, who devoted her life to helping women in Iran. I was close to her and we organized meetings and demonstrations denouncing death by stoning against women, which is, alas, very frequent in Iran and in too many other countries.

I was involved in another NGO, the Sudanese Committee, at the time when the North Sudan army attacked South Sudan for ethnic and religious reasons and perpetrated crimes against humanity by destroying villages, raping women and killing women and children. At the same time in Algeria, the Armed Islamic Group was committing mass murders in villages -- such as the well known case of Benthala where the inhabitants were massacred. What all these atrocities have in common is that they took women as their principal victims. While Algerian women, Sudanese women and others were fighting to keep their rights, in other countries like Iran, and even worse in Afghanistan, women had already lost these rights.

It was in Algeria that I met Shukria Haidar, an Afghan woman who told us about what was going on in Aghanistan under Taliban rule. I remember Shukria during a meeting in Algiers, haranguing Algerian women who enjoy some security and protection, telling them how they had to be vigilant and defend their rights -- and giving the terrible example of their Afghan sisters.

Indeed, the Taliban had already denied to Afghan women every basic right: the right to education, to health care, to walk about freely without a male escort, the right to work, the right to listen to music, and so on. Of course Afghan men were also suffering from this terrible regime, obliged to wear a long beard, and suffering from how their wives and daughters were treated by the Taliban. This is not acceptable and I was moved to help Afghan women.

At that time nobody knew what was going on in Afghanistan. Emma Bonino, who was the European Commissioner for human rights made a trip to Kabul; she was the first. She came back horrified by what she had seen. Shukria and I decided to make known the fate of women in Afghanistan and decided to recover dignity and basic rights for Afghan women. With a group of 300 women from all around the world (America, Africa, Asia) we decided to organize a conference in Dushanbe in Tajikistan to allow Afghan women refugees to tell their stories. The group was led by an extraordinary Algerian woman, Khalida Messaoudi, who has devoted her life to fighting extremism and promoting human rights in her country.

National assembly attendees listening to Ms. Patricia Lalonde

Organizing the conference was a difficult task. We were facing problems with the French government and with some NGO's who were wondering why this group of women wanted to interfere in their business! We even received a phone call from Kabul from one NGO who told us that it is not a good idea to interfere in fate of Afghan women or in Afghan politics because the Taliban would be angry and would be even more severe with women! But we did not give up. Two women from inside Afghanistan, from Mazar e Sharif and from Herat, where the Taliban had taken control, attended the conference. One of them, Massouda, was a doctor and the Taliban let her practice as a doctor only because they couldn't find another male doctor in the region. She told us how she had been humiliated by the Taliban. She managed to escape and was a fantastic witness for us.

During this conference, we helped the Afghan women to write the charter of the essentials rights that they were asking for. And we, European women, wrote a text, supporting them. They spent all the night writing the charter of their basic rights: education, access to healthcare, being allowed to go outside without a male chaperone from their family, freedom not to wear a head covering, etc. Many Europeans and American journalists were attending our meeting and the Afghan women were so moved to see that other women were helping them.

We went to the Panjshir Valley with this charter to have it signed by the great resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. He agreed and signed it while adding a little modification: "with due respect for the culture of the country". Later we went to the UN to have it signed by leaders of other countries. We organized meetings everywhere, in the U.S. as well as in Europe, to gather more signatures. I went in the Panjshir Valley one year later in July 2001 to help a girls' schools. I was carrying dollars in my pockets and went to visit three of them in a little village. I met with a wonderful Afghan woman, Faranoz Nazir, who signed our charter and she introduced me to other women.

I was very well accepted because I was a mother of 6 children -- as they were convinced that European women were having only one or two children. There was one woman who was complaining about her husband who had taken a second wife. She was sad and we tried to comfort her. I was so moved to see how she was grateful just because I was interested in her woman's story.

During a trip to Kwaja Bahhauddin in Afghanistan, I had another opportunity to meet with, Ahmad Shah Massoud, a hero who dedicated his life to freedom. I spoke to him about women rights and the charter we had brought to him the year before. He told me that if women were wearing the burqa, it should be "up to them." That they should be not obliged. Some women were only simply covering their heads with scarves. You could see women walking alone in the streets and girls were going to school. One month later, Massoud was assassinated. As a result of all this, the public now knew that Afghan women were asking for their basic rights.

Then September 11th happened; the country was liberated by the U.S. forces with help from the Northern Alliance.

In November 2001, we went to the Bonn conference with the Charter to be sure that the rights of Afghan women would be part of the negotiations being held to decide on a plan for governing the country. Following the Bonn Agreement and the transitional government led by Hamid Karzai, a new Constitution was established in which women's rights were integrated. Women have to be protected by law.

In this constitution:

Article 22 outlaws discrimination on account of sex and declares that women and men are equal in rights and duties...

Article 44 makes a commitment to implement effective programs to balancing and promoting the education of women and eliminating illiteracy.

Article 53 also guarantees the rights, privileges and assistance to women who do not have caretakers.

Article 54 requires the adoption of measures necessary to ensure the physical and psychological well being of the family, especially of child and mother.

Articles 83 and 84 highlight the importance of leveling the playing field to promote political participation of women by providing specific quotas for the number of women representatives.

However, Article 3 is not very clear, saying that the Constitution cannot be implemented against the rules of the Sharia. The Taliban, if they came back to power, could unfortunately interpret this article to their advantage and bring back the oppression of women. But with this Constitution and the Karzai government, Afghan women had the legal means to recover their basic rights.

The years from 2003 to 2009 are considered as the most encouraging years in the promotion of women's rights in Afghanistan. If I feel that Afghan women have won the first battle on dignity, the challenge is now to defend what they have gained and to empower them and to show them the way to leadership. I have always thought that women are necessary to rebuild a country and to bring peace. Education was a priority after 20 years of war.

I dedicated myself to the construction of a school in Mazar e Sharif for both boys and girls in Afghanistan. 80% of the teachers were women. It was a difficult task for me because I was a small NGO. I would go alone to Afghanistan and I had to fight with big NGO's who gave me problems. One of my Afghan friends, Nasrine Gross , who organized the Dushambe conference with us, had the idea to set up literacy lessons for couples (the Rokia Centers). Wives and husbands attend class together so that once back home they could both share with the rest of the family what they had learned at school.

One of my other objectives was to empower women through microcredit projects. 10 years ago I had the opportunity to meet the famous Mohammad Younus, before he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize. As head of the Grameen Bank he was making loans to women in order for them to start small businesses. Microcredit was a great success in Bangladesh. Experience showed that women where systematically paying back their loans so I decided to experiment myself with microcredit in Afghanistan through my NGO. I started in a little village in the Panshjir valley and lent money to 20 Afghans, 12 women and 8 men. One of the women for example is now very successful with her tailoring business.

In this period in Afghanistan, women in big cities were starting to gain confidence and some of them became heads of companies. But one of the most important steps for women in leadership came with Parliamentary elections when 25% of them were elected.

Now that women in Afghanistan had started to recover their dignity I decided that my NGO, MEWA, had to help those MPs in their routine legislative tasks. Most of them had never been outside Afghanistan, so my idea was to enable them to get out of their country and visit a democracy.

We therefore organized in 2006 a visit to Paris for a group of 30 Afghan women legislators, and another visit in 2007 to Istanbul for 20 of them. During these trips, in addition to visits to the French and the Turkish parliaments, they benefited from training workshops provided by MEWA in partnership with the American NGO Vital Voices. During this training we taught them how to organize women caucuses when trying to pass a bill on sensitive issues such as women's rights.

We had our first success one year later. When the vote came up about the budget of the Women's Affairs Ministry, a majority of men in the Afghan Parliament refused to pass the bill. The women who were defending the budget decided to walk out of the Parliament together -- forcing the male opposition to give in and accept the bill. Thanks to our training efforts Afghan women MPs succeeded in passing the bill. This event was filmed by Diana Saqueb, a young Afghan journalist. Her documentary was nominated for a prize at many human rights festivals.

I have many wonderful stories about these women MP's. Fauzia koofi, was the vice president of the parliament. She is the MP of one of the most remote places in Afghanistan, Badhjastan, where it is difficult to build roads and schools. It's the place where Craig Mortensen chose to build schools! She has 3 children. Her husband was killed by Taliban and she is educating her children while taking on huge responsibilities in the Afghan parliament. I met her at her home in Kabul and she told me how difficult her life was -- but how strong she feels trying to empower women in parliament. She organized a demonstration last year while the parliament tried to pass the "shia law" that threatened the gains of women. I invited her in Paris later and we became friends.

Shukria Barutzai, a Kabul MP, is also a powerful woman in the parliament. I invited her to France to give her the opportunity to go to the Women's Forum held in France and to meet with other women leaders. This trip was very useful for her and she went back to Kabul stronger.

Zahera Sharif, MP from Khost province, where Taliban are now resurgent. She has 5 children and every day defies a Taliban threat when she drives alone around her district to help women.?When she was in Paris for our training program she told me, smiling, that she left the care of her children to her husband -- and that it was a good thing for him because he would have to learn to cook the rice!! This woman was incredible!

I also had the opportunity to meet with the first female governor Habiba Sorabi. I met her in her province, in Bamyan, where she is doing so much to build hospitals, schools, empowering women. When former First Lady Laura Bush came to Afghanistan very early after the liberation of the country, she went to Bamyan to visit Habiba Sorabi and they both became friends. Later I myself had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Bush and we spoke about her courage and how we could help her.

Promoting gender equality will remain a battle in Afghanistan which is constantly battered by lack of peace, by insecurity and political instability. Unfortunately, the Taliban are back again in some places in Afghanistan, burning girl's schools, threatening women candidates in the parliamentary elections.

I don't want to give up. We have to continue the fight to be sure that Afghan women will keep their basic rights and that they can be empowered. If Afghan women lose their battle, women all around the world will be defeated and many will be in danger. These times are particularly difficult because there is talk of negotiating with the Taliban. If so, there is a real risk that women's rights will again be denied. If we are going to negotiate with the opposition in Afghanistan, it should be with democratic opposition. Why do we not hear our presidents and other leaders promoting these negotiations first! We should not risk alienating those in Afghanistan who are the natural allies of our democracies.

Through all these years I have encountered many obstacles, and have even felt depressed and angry. But each time I struggled to overcome personal and political obstacles. And it has made me feel stronger because I have helped other women feel stronger. Every time I returned from one of my missions to Afghanistan (I have been there 15 times in 9 years) I enjoyed sharing with my family and friends the stories of the courageous people I met in this remarkable country.

In America, as in Europe, we have the concept of inalienable rights, like the right to free speech, life, liberty, association and happiness. But in many countries of the world women do not enjoy these rights. It is up to us mothers and sisters, as women around the world, to educate and support not only all women, but women leaders as well. And we do this by helping their families and communities to understand the value of basic human rights. It's also important not to feel alone and to struggle together.

Our work for Afghan women can be done even in small ways in all of our lives. For instance, my good friend Connie Borde has just finished a new translation of Simone de Beauvoir's classic work the Second Sex and when she presents her translation in the US she never forgets to give Afghan women as an example. I am sure all of you here can use the example of Afghan women in your own families and communities. We should never forget them.

I am working now with an Iranian woman Fariba Hachroudi and a group of French intellectuals like Bernard Henri-Levy to try to save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani who has been condemned to death by stoning in Iran. If we succeed in saving her, we will campaign in the Muslim world so that death by stoning will be outlawed. Sometimes I have the feeling that we are fighting for nothing. That our efforts are small drops of water in a vast turbulent ocean.

But the key is to remain convinced that each drop is useful. And even small contributions bring us out of the little worlds around us and give as a bigger vision of how things should be.

Standing applause

This struggle is yours, this struggle is ours -- it is the struggle of all women. By engaging in it together we all grow stronger together. The stronger we feel, the more we will find strong women among us who will become the natural women leaders of a more just world – and a more just world not only for women. It has been a privilege to share my experiences with you here today.

Thank you".