Women and Politics In Africa :: essays research papers

There was a young woman who left her home in Mycrorayan in Kabul, Afghanistan forPeshawar after the January 1994 fighting and told Amnesty International of the quest situation. "One day when my father was walking past a building complex heheard screams of women coming from an apartment block which had just been capturedby forces of General Dostum. He was told by the people that Dostums guards hadentered the block and were looting the property and raping the women."The following story comes out of Iran. "On August 10, 1994, in the city of Arak,Iran, a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. According to the ruling of thereligious judge, her husband and two children were forced to attend the execution.The woman urged her husband to take the children away, notwithstanding to no avail. A truckfull of stones was brought in to be used during the stoning. In the middle of thestoning, although her eyes had been gouged out, the victim was able to escape fromthe ditch and starte d running away, but the regimes guards recaptured her and shother to death."From China comes the following observation. "Still in the streets an occasional oldcrone hobbling around on her miniature bound feet was a relic of the pre- ultra, around dead past. I also heard an echo of that past in a silk threadfactory in Wuxi, China. A woman member of its Revolutionary Committee wasintroduced to me as a veteran worker. The description astonished me because shelooked so young. On inquiry I learned that she was indeed only 34 years old, butthat she had toiled in the mill for twenty-six years, having begun this job as an 8-year old child.These three incidents reflect typical crimes and injustices against women in theThird cosmos countries. Crimes against women include abuse, slavery, falseimprisonment, murder and rape. In these countries, women are considered to beinferior to men and are not granted equal rights or protection under the laws. Thegovernments, religions and cultures of these countries support the inequalities,thus allowing vicious crimes against women to continue without any recourse by thevictims. The phrase womens rights refers to the basic human rights that arewithheld from women simply because they are women. Womens rights heightenpolitical, social and economic equality for women in a society that traditionallyconfers more status and freedom to men. A basic right is for girls to grow up to bewomen today twelve percent of the females born worldwide are missing, many of them