Rallying the world against human rights violations in Afghanistan
Sima Samar, BU’s 2006 Visiting Scholar in Global Health, works against human rights violations in war-torn Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, a focus in the war on terror, has been embroiled in war and fighting for much of its recent history. Invaded by the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, the country then became entangled in a civil war, followed by the rise, fall, and resurgence of the Taliban. One of the many casualties during the decades of violence has been the basic human rights of the Afghan people.
Today, human rights violations arise mainly from the scarcity of law enforcement and a lack of accountability for what does exist, as well as from the absence of a justice system, says Sima Samar, the chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to Sudan. Samar will speak at Boston University on Tuesday, October 24, in her capacity as BU’s Global Health Initiative 2006 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Global Health. The GHI visiting scholar program provides a framework for developing important new collaborations and partnerships between BU and leaders in health and science across the globe.
These human rights violations, which occur against ordinary citizens who have no means of defending themselves, according to Samar, include arbitrary arrest, torture, inhumane detention conditions, illegal seizure of property, forced marriage, child abduction and trafficking, lack of freedom of speech and expression, and minimal access to health care.
“Human rights are the basic rights of everyone — it is not only for the American; it is for everyone,” says Samar, a physician who fled Afghanistan after her husband was arrested in 1984 — and never heard from again — and spent 17 years in exile in Pakistan. There she founded a hospital for Afghan refugee women and children. In 1989, she created the Shuhada Organization, a nonprofit focused on the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan for the weakest in its society.
In December 2001, she returned to Afghanistan to serve as deputy prime minister for the country’s interim government; she established and was minister of Afghanistan’s first Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
While Afghanistan has taken steps toward future stability, including the 2004 election, in which many women voted, of Hamid Karzai (Hon.’05), the country’s first democratically elected president, the world needs to be more engaged in helping the people of Afghanistan reconstruct their lives and their country, says Samar.
“The United States, in fact, is not really pushing for human rights. They are very much working on the military field to defeat the Taliban,” she says. “The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission takes the leading role to make human rights a reality for the people.”
A 5:15 p.m. reception precedes Samar’s lecture, which begins at 5:45 p.m. and is followed by panel and audience discussions. The event will be held at the School of Management auditorium, 595 Commonwealth Ave. For more information, call 617-638-5234 or visit id-andrea.cms-devl.bu.edu/ghi.
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