Upcoming Conference in Herat, Afghanistan
More details to come soon!

Women for Afghan Women (WAW) is planning our fourth annual conference to be held in Herat, Afghanistan in Spring 2006. Because of violence in Afghanistan associated with the September Parliamentary elections, WAW took the advice of many funders and local NGOs and postponed the conference until mid-2006. The purpose of the conference will be to address the difficult subject of marriage/family law and Sharia in Afghanistan.

It will bring to Herat about 30 grassroots women from throughout Afghanistan, women of diverse ethnicity, age and background, uneducated women from remote rural areas and small towns, who continue to suffer appalling gender discrimination. These women will be joined by progressive, educated Afghan women (and men), scholars, lawyers, judges, with strong convictions about compatibility of Islam and women’s rights.

In the mornings of each day we will organize panels aimed at loosening the stranglehold of customary law on marriage and family life focusing on topics central to women: minimum marriageable age, forced marriage, bad blood price, domestic violence, divorce, child custody, and polygamy.  Each afternoon, experts will hold interactive sessions on the topics covered in morning panels to help participants begin the long process of internalizing new ideas and uprooting the misinformation spread in the name of Islam. We will also hold training sessions, mock debates and discussions, so that when the participants return home, they will be equipped not only with information but also with basic skills to help them present this information to their communities.

WAW’s conference is designed to engage in the slow but essential process of replacing in practice customary law with civil law that can be demonstrated to be compatible with Islam.

We have chosen Herat as the venue because it is the center of an area where women constraints on women’s freedom are extreme, even for Afghanistan, and where a tragic epidemic has erupted—women attempting to escape intolerable domestic situations by self-immolating.  WAW has also formed a coalition with two Herati women’s NGOs, Voice of Women Organization and Women’s Assistance and Social Service Association, to develop programs aimed at suicide prevention in rural areas.

More information to come soon!