Where human rights is still a long journey

Both Najibullah and Suraya are here to attend a global meet on the rights of the disabled. Suraya, who looks after women’s rights in Herat province, confesses that there is a long way to make her country integrate with rest of the world on human rights.

An engineering graduate from Kabul University who left the country for Iran as Russian tanks rolled into her country, Suraya says that human rights activists are an eyesore to the war-lords and criminal chieftains who still rule the roost in the countryside. ‘‘Each time I try to meet women prisoners, I find key government officials not being helpful to me,’’ says Suraya.

However, winds of change are blowing all over the country as women are more free to chose what they wish to do, says Najibullah, an economics graduate who worked with Afghan refugees in Pakistan before returning home. ‘‘I was surprised to see women workers on construction sites and even I saw some of them working on roads along with men in rural areas.’’

Najibullah says though there are miles to go before pulling the traumatised Afghanistan out of the ‘‘war psychology’’, it’s heartening to note that about four million children — girls and boys — are today enrolled in schools. In some cases, co-education is also being encouraged.

The country carried out polio immunisation campaign successfully.

The main worry of the Human rights campaigners in Afghanistan remains the orphans, he says. ‘‘Lakhs of children who are seen begging and washing cars need shelters and rehabilitation.’’ The help here is coming slowly.

Both Suraya and Najibullah are first timers to Delhi. However, Najibullah boasts of his India links — an Indian consultant who is a popular figure in his Kabul office. Madhu Pillai, the Kerala-born UN consultant on education has endeared himself to not only his colleagues in the Afghan Human Rights Commission but also to the villagers whom he visits freely.

According to Najibullah United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) and other funding agencies are so pleased with Pillai’s work that they have decided to appoint one foreign consultant on education in each of the five chapters of the Commission.