World Medical Association Resolution on the Prohibition of Access of Women to Health Care and the Prohibition of Practice of Female Doctors in Afghanistan

Resolution

By: World Medical Association

Date: November 1997

Source: World Medical Association. "World Medical Association Resolution on the Prohibition of Access of Women to Health Care and the Prohibition of Practice of Female Doctors in Afghanistan" (November 1997). 〈http://www.wma.net/e/policy/a12.htm〉 (accessed April 22, 2006).

About the Author: The World Medical Association, founded in 1947, is an international organization of physicians committed to promoting ethical standards, freedom of movement across borders for medical personnel, and helping physicians worldwide with professional health care issues.

INTRODUCTION

The 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union and subsequent ten-year war led to chaos. The mujahedin—Muslims who fought against Soviet forces—received aid from the United States, China, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989, the mujahedin split into two competing groups, the Afghan Northern Alliance and the Taliban. By 1996, the Taliban, whose name means "seeker" or "student of Islam," gained power in Afghanistan.

After it took the capital city of Kabul on September 26, 1996, the Taliban imposed sharia, or Islamic religious law, on all of Afghanistan. Women were harshly restricted and lost both civil and personal rights, such as the right to work, to vote, to be educated, or to be seen in public unescorted by a male relative. In addition, women were required to wear full body coverings called burqa and forbidden to wear white (the official color of the Taliban).

By 1997, the Taliban ordered hospitals to be segregated by gender and banned women from work in medicine and education. In Kabul, which had twenty-two hospitals, the city's more than 500,000 women were forced to use a single facility with limited supplies and no electricity. Many women whose husbands refused to let them be seen by male doctors were left without access to any health care at all.

Organized Afghan protests of this treatment were rare, although the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, or RAWA, a women's rights organization founded in 1977, continued to work behind the scenes. The prodemocracy and antifundamentalist RAWA openly condemned the Taliban's oppressive rule; many women who spoke out faced the death penalty for their actions.

International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as medical organizations such as Physicians for Human, also condemned the Taliban's treatment of women. The document below is a resolution passed by the World Medical Association.

PRIMARY SOURCE

World Medical Association Resolution on the Prohibition of Access of Women to Health Care and the Prohibition of Practice by Female Doctors in Afghanistan Adopted by the 49th WMA General Assembly, Hamburg, Germany, November 1997

PREAMBLE

For years women and girls in Afghanistan have been suffering increasing violations of their human rights; In 1996 a general prohibition was introduced on practice by women, which affected more than 40,000 women. Human rights organisations call this a "human rights catastrophe" for the women in Afghanistan. Women are completely excluded from social life, girls' schools are closed, women students have been expelled from universities, and women and girls are stoned in the street. According to information from the United Nations on the human rights situation in Afghanistan (February, 1996) the prohibition on practice affects first of all women working in the educational and health sectors. In particular female doctors and nurses were prevented from exercising their profession. Although the health sector was on the brink of collapse under these restrictions, they have been eased only slightly. Without access to female doctors female patients and their children have no access to health care. Some female doctors have been allowed now to exercise their profession, but in general only under strict and unacceptable supervision (US Department of State, Afghanistan Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, January 1997).

RECOMMENDATION

Therefore, the World Medical Association urges its national member associations to insist and call on their governments:

—to condemn roundly the serious violations of the basic human rights of women in Afghanistan; and,

—to take worldwide action aimed at restoring the fundamental human rights of women and removing the provision prohibiting women from practising their profession.

—to insist on the rights of women to adequate medical care across the whole range of medical and surgical services, including acute, subacute and ongoing treatment.

SIGNIFICANCE

A 1999 survey of Afghan women revealed "extraordinarily" high levels of mental stress and depression, with eighty-one percent reporting a decline in their mental condition over the past two years. Forty-two percent met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), ninety-seven percent exhibited major depression, and eighty-six percent demonstrated significant symptoms of anxiety. Twenty-one percent indicated that they had suicidal thoughts "extremely often" or "quite often."

The ban on female physicians, which prevented female physicians from practicing, cut 40,000 medical professionals from Afghanistan's health care system and removed the only medical practitioners some female Muslims were permitted to access. The resulting crisis led to a higher mortality rate for women and infants and for widows and other women without male relatives to chaperone them.

The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by United States forces in the wake of the September 11, 2001 bombings in the United States by Al-Qaeda, removed the Taliban from power, the first step to improving women's status in Afghanistan. As of April 2006, Afghanistan's infant mortality rate was the second highest in the world. For children under the age of five, the death rate was 257 per 1,000. Malnutrition, poor education rates for young mothers, and severe shortages of trained doctors and supplies continued to hamper health care efforts in Afghanistan.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Brodsky, Anne E. With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan. Routledge, 2003.

Skaine, Rosemarie. The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2001.

Web sites

Associated Press. "Mortality Rates Climb in Afghanistan." April 19, 2006. 〈http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/〉 (accessed April 21, 2006).

Physicians for Human Rights. "1999 Report: The Taliban's War on Women—A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan." 1999. 〈http://www.phrusa.org/research/health_effects/exec.html〉 (accessed April 20, 2006).

U.S. Department of State. "Report on the Taliban's War against Women." November 17, 2001. 〈http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/c4804.htm〉 (accessed April 20, 2006).