Thirty years ago, the global community adopted the Beijing Declaration. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Its text may be familiar to most women’s organisations, some civil servants, even a few politicians, but it is hardly common knowledge.
Yet the resolution signed by 189 countries – including Afghanistan – is the single most important text on women’s rights ever produced. Its 39 paragraphs describe a set of principles to advance the “goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity”.
As the then First Lady Hillary Clinton said when the declaration was agreed: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights – and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely – and the right to be heard.”
Stirring words, which will no doubt be repeated in New York on Monday, March 10, when the world gathers to celebrate 30 years of the declaration at the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, a body dedicated to securing women’s rights, which was set up in 1946 in the optimistic aftermath of the Second World War.
Twenty-four hours before the delegates pour into the United Nations building in midtown Manhattan, two of the world’s best cricket teams will have just finished playing in the final of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) Men’s Champions Trophy. Hundreds of millions people around the world will watch the game, which could potentially see the England national squad facing off against Afghanistan, the country where women and girls are denied their most basic human rights, including education.
The country where women and girls are not allowed to “speak freely” in public. The country where girls are banned from playing sport – any sport – and its national women’s cricket team was banned by the Taliban when they returned to power in August 2021. Afghanistan, the country where women and girls are treated as less than human, but its male cricketers are heroes and welcomed on the global stage.
A recent declaration from the Taliban is banning windows so that women can’t be seen in their homes.
In many countries, the birth of a girl is still greeted with disappointment. The selective abortion of female foetuses remains widespread in some parts of the world, even in countries like India where the practice has been outlawed. And in Afghanistan – the worst place on Earth to be female – the ruling regime has systemically stripped women and girls of every single human right.
Last week in Geneva, the special envoys on Afghanistan from some of the world’s leading economies, including the USA and Britain, issued a statement expressing their “grave concern” over the treatment of Afghan women and girls, and looked forward to meeting again in the near future. Perhaps next time they will take action, instead of simply publishing toothless texts.
The sporting boycott of South Africa was widely regarded as an essential part of the successful international campaign to end apartheid. The country was banned from the Olympics, the Fifa World Cup and international cricket tournaments for nearly 30 years, until 1992. Rugby and cricket were central to the national identity of South Africa’s white minority and the sporting ban did as much as economic isolation and political pressure to bring about the end of apartheid.
As long as Afghanistan’s male cricket team is welcome on the world stage, the Taliban win. Women’s rights campaigners and ‘special representatives’ can issue as many strongly worded statements of condemnation as they wish, they will be simply be brushed aside by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and his Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry, the morality police which enforce the Taliban’s evil rules, as they cheer on their national team.
There is no political or moral justification for allowing the country to take part in any sporting tournament. . .
It is difficult to understand how the antediluvian treatment of women in Afghanistan can be happening in the 21st century. but it is and the world needs to adopt the 20th century tactics of both economic and sporting boycotts to drag the Taliban and its followers into the modern world and end the abuses against women and girls.
Apropos of this, why the silence and lack of protests from the people who purport to stand up for the oppressed? Don’t women’s lives matter to them as much as those of blacks, Palestinians, trans people and the other groups DEI disciples defend so publicly and noisily?
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
1 comment:
There is no domestic political mileage to be had with the identity frenzy block in countries such as NZ. Biological women do not fit the current ''victim'' mantra. Hence few votes in it for the identity first political parties. Sporting boycotts of Afghanistan (Muslim) over women's rights could offend Islamic nations not to mention African (and other) sympathisers against ''western interference''. Re South Africa it is often said sporting boycotts helped topple apatheid but that country had considerable support behind the scenes as an anti-communist bulwark. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR and the same for revolutionary govts in Angola, Mozambique etc removed the justification and need to support the South African govt. Times were changing and so did South Africa , albeit it reluctantly. Continued support from western countries would not be forthcoming. Devout beliefs would come well before sport for the dictators in Afghanistan would they not? Merely harden their resolve.
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