SUPPORTING WOMEN & RECONSTRUCTION IN AFGHANISTAN
2005
WHEREAS, the war in Afghanistan has left millions homeless without basic necessities and exposed to great health risk from untreated sewage, a devastated health care system, and destroyed personal security, especially for women;
WHEREAS, at least forty of the schools for women and girls, so recently opened, have been burned and/or destroyed;
WHEREAS, the Taliban and other oppressive sects are rebounding with a vengeance; WHEREAS Bush promised a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan;
WHEREAS, the dire personal conditions in Afghanistan fueled poppy-growing, drug trafficking, and sexual trafficking;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that NOW urge the U.S. government to:
- Increase of the size of the International Peacekeeping troops;
- Deliver seriously on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Afghanistan, and to earmark a significant proportion of these funds for the building of women’s clinics and the development of women’s and girls’ schools and programs;
- Provide viable economic alternatives designed to reduce poppy exportation; ▪ Stop the trafficking of women and children, both girls and boys;
- Stop the U.S. military’s Army’s deals with the warlords that undermine the emerging democracy.
TERRORISM RESOLUTION
11/01
WHEREAS, NOW condemns terrorism committed by religious fundamentalist extremists both at home and abroad; and
WHEREAS, NOW recognizes that the Taliban’s ambition is to spread their version of extremist fundamentalist religion, targeting women’s rights, to Afghanistan’s neighbors from Pakistan to Indonesia to Algeria and beyond; and WHEREAS, the United Nations is the international organization with the legitimate responsibility to end terrorism and ensure peace; and
WHEREAS, religious fundamentalist extremists have a demonstrated historical pattern of targeting women and women’s rights initially, as well as members of minority religious and ethnic communities and gays and lesbians; and
WHEREAS, prior to September 11, 2001, the feminist movement had already condemned the Taliban for their violence against women, ethnic and religious minorities and gay men and lesbians; and WHEREAS, NOW has a long history of opposing the use of violence to answer violence,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that NOW urges the U.S. to condemn and prosecute terrorism in all its forms, both domestically and internationally; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW calls on the U.S. and U.N. to immediately distribute billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, including nutritious food and medical aid, to save the 7 million Afghans who are in pre-famine conditions; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW continues to call for the removal of the Taliban regime and to demand the equal inclusion of Afghan women in the peace process and at the decision-making table in the establishment of a post-Taliban government; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW calls on the U.S. and its allies to cease the bombing of innocent people in an already economically devastated country, and to join in strong international efforts to arrest the perpetrators of human rights violations and terrorism and bring them to justice through the appropriate criminal justice processes, including the international criminal court in the Hague; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW calls for the re-establishment of Afghanistan’s constitutional democracy with restoration of women’s civil and political rights, and with women fully participating at all levels of government, including an independent judiciary; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that NOW calls on the nations of the world to commit to financially support a total economic and social reconstruction within Afghanistan, modeled after the Marshall Plan implemented after World War II; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NOW demands the equal inclusion of women at all levels in the establishment and implementation of U.S. foreign policy and that the U.S. must change its foreign policy to recognize that upholding women’s rights is essential in the fight both to end terrorism and to establish a just and humane society.