'Respect for women rights regressing in Afghanistan,' right body warns

Ottawa, May 27 (ANI): Afghans are losing hope in the future of their country as security deteriorates and women's rights erode, a member of Afghanistan's human rights commission has warned.

Soraya Sobhrang, speaking by teleconference link from Kabul on Tuesday, said respect for the rights of women is regressing in her country and conditions are coming to resemble life under the Taliban, whose extremist regime was toppled in 2001.

Sobhrang has been an outspoken critic of the Kabul Government's adoption of a law in March that legalized marital rape.

After pressure from Canada and other countries, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has vowed to change it, Globe and Mail reported.

"We are going back to (something) like the Taliban situation in Afghanistan," Sobhrang, a commissioner focusing on women's rights, told the House of Commons special committee on Afghanistan.

Canada funds about 30 per cent of the budget of Afghanistan's human rights commission, the mandate of which comes from the Afghan constitution.

Sobhrang reminded Canada that when the United States and NATO arrived in Afghanistan, defending women's rights was high on their list.

Canada has been fighting the Taliban and other anti-government insurgents in Afghanistan for nearly a decade and its efforts have been focused on the deadly province of Kandahar for more than three years, the paper reports.

Sobhrang said mothers are increasingly fearful about sending their girls to school, even kindergarten classes, as the Taliban and their sympathizers burn schools.

She said the mood of people she has talked to in Kandahar province is growing bleak. "Really now there is no security in Kandahar."

"They (people) are losing their hope for the future ... their future is looking very, very dark. This is very, very dangerous for a population when they lose their hope," Sobhrang said. ANI)