From Independent Women’s Forum, “Despite praise of a Constitution that protects the rights of Afghan Women, Afghan women continue to suffer abuse from men and society in general. Halima Karzai, Associate Director of International Policy for the Independent Women’s Forum, has written a powerful piece on the continuing problem of oppression and violence against Afghan women before and after the Taliban.”
Such reports are disturbing at so many levels, one hardly knows where to begin. First there is the comparative lack of attention to this issue by the public, the press, and in the political sphere; this appalling abuse has become background noise to which we are almost accustomed. Second there is the puzzle of how such practices begin and spread and are so hard to root out. One would think that the abuses would be instantly recognizable as morally unthinkable. One would think that they run so counter to ordinary primate biology, in which males and females have somewhat different roles and scuffle but nonetheless remain part of a whole cooperative group, that there would be some natural resistance to them. One would think that local observers would recognize the value of a more inclusive society in which their children would be more quickly lifted out of poverty in an economy enriched by the education and intellectual capital of the whole population. As in apartheid South Africa, exclusion is not only wrong, but it denies the economy entrepreneurs, managers, technologists, teachers, and other seeds of growth.
Something here has gone sadly wrong. It rather puts concerns about the exact scope of the rights of makers of mashups in a new perspective.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.