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November 29, 2006

Afghanistan: Teacher Ripped Apart For Educating Girls

The Independent and the New Zealand Herald carry a report by Kim Sengupta. This describes the grisly fate which befell a 46-year old schoolteacher from Ghazni, Afghanistan, who disobeyed Taliban orders and educated girls.

Mohammed Halim was taken from his home at night by gunmen. His body was partially disemboweled, and then his limbs were tied to motorbikes. As the vehicles accelerated away, his body was ripped apart. What remained of the teacher was then put on display as a warning to other teachers who dared to educate girls. Mr Halim was the fourth teacher to be killed in Ghazni recently.

Even though the Taliban were officially deposed at the end of 2001, their legacy of preventing girls from receiving education has persisted. On July 23 this year Michael Frastacky, a 56-year old carpenter from Vancouver, was shot dead. For four summers, he had labored to build a school in the remote Nahrin Valley, north of Kabul in the Hindu Kush. He had intended the school to provide education for boys and girls in equal numbers. In order to accommodate the strict faith of the communities in this remote region, he was working on placing a separate playground for the girls when he was killed.

Schooling for both boys and girls in Afghanistan has suffered from the actions of Islamists. On March 8, this year, on International Women's Day, president Hamid Karzai admitted: "From fear of terrorism, from threats of the enemies of Afghanistan, today as we speak, some 100,000 Afghan children who went to school last year, and the year before last, do not go to school."

This year, attacks upon teachers, students and schools have increased dramatically, particularly in the southern regions of Afghanistan. In January, there were 24 such attacks, in February there were 14, 8 attacks in March, 28 in April, 22 in May and 12 in June, states an August report from Human Rights Watch. In the first six months of this year, the highest number of such attacks took place in Kandahar (36 incidents), followed by Helmand (27), and then Ghazni and Khost with 16 cases each.

Human Rights Watch states that even before the Taliban assumed power in 1996, the Mujaideen who had been involved in factional disputes between 1992 and 1996 also opposed the education of girls. A report was published this week by the charity Oxfam, and claims that although 5 million children are now in school, compared to 3.1 million in 2003 and only 1 million during the reign of the Taliban regime, more than seven million children are currently not receiving education.

For girls, the situation is worse than boys, states the Oxfam report, which is entitled Free, Quality Education for Every Afghan Child. It can be found in pdf format HERE.

Only one in five girls are able to make their way to primary schools, but only one in 20 girls receive a secondary education. Human Rights Watch and Oxfam concur that the presence of accessible schools is a problem, and where there is access to education, it is often provided by poorly trained teachers working in run-down buildings, often comprising only one or two rooms. These schools can be in need of repair, and most have no clean drinking water or toilet facilities. Textbooks are few and far between.

The lack of nearby schools mean that more than half of Afghanistan's children do not have schooling, in denial of Article 43 (1) of the national Constitution, adopted on July 11 this year. This states: "Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be provided up to secondary level, free of charge by the state."

Oxfam claims that 53,000 trained primary school teachers are needed immediately, with a further 64,000 in the next five years. There is a need for more women teachers, as only one in three are currently female. The report also states that there needs to be substantial investment to improve the situation. Teachers in Daikundi province in central Afghanistan only receive $38 per month. Sometimes these teachers have to pay bribes, just to receive their wages.

Apparently there are 20,000 "ghost" teachers who are paid salaries but do not attend schools. The international community, states Oxfam, must donate $563 million to rebuild 7,800 schools across the country. An additional $210 million is needed to print and distribute textbooks over the next five years. Currently, $125.6 million has been given to Afghan's education sector. The largest donors of these funds are USAID and the World Bank. Coalition military forces in Afghanistan also contribute towards education.

Afghanistan's Education Minister, Hanif Atmar, has tried to play down the findings of the Oxfam report. He told the BBC that even though more international funding was required, his government was committed to establishing more school places and improving the quality of teaching.

Atmar said: "The enrolment that we have in our schools today, at around six million children, we've never had in our history, so that's a great progress made. However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed. The critical issue is training of teachers, in particular female teachers, but for training we do need resources that we do not have adequately at the moment."

Education is not the only area in which girls are receiving a poor deal. Honor killings are on the increase, with more than 186 girls killed so far this year, a huge increase on figures for last year, states the NGO, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Girls are still regarded as chattels, to be married off against their will.

A report from September last year by the US State Department revealed that "the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, between 60% and 80% of marriages in Afghanistan are forced marriages which give women no right to refuse. Many of those marriages, especially in the rural areas, involve girls below the age of 15."

With girls often married off while physically immature, despite the new Constitution stipulating that a girl must not be married below the age of 16, their health suffers. In 2004, two women in Afghanistan died every hour while giving birth, the highest maternal mortality rate in Asia.

Girls and women are also subject to domestic violence. AIHRC states that this year, there were 704 known cases of such abuse, with 89 cases of forced marriage and 50 cases of women or girls "burning themselves to death".

Proper education for today's children in Afghanistan is a priority, to ensure a future that is better than the present. But though children are now in need of schools the whole society in Afghanistan, which legally stipulates the death penalty for those leaving Islam, is in need of a massive re-education program.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 29, 2006 10:51 PM

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Posted by: Moonzoo at November 29, 2006 11:22 PM

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