KUALA LUMPUR: Most women in Afghanistan don’t get a chance to grow old, Massouda Jalal told the elegantly dressed delegates at the inaugural Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Ministerial Meeting on Woman and Empowerment that ended here on Tuesday. “Many of them are dead before they reach old age,” she added.

Massouda, the minister for women’s affairs in Afghanistan, shocked delegates with her grim description of the plight of women in her war battered country after the US toppled the Taliban government in late 2001 and set up a ‘democracy’.

“The average lifespan of Afghan women is only 44 years. Women die early because of lack of medical care especially during childbirth,” she said. The minister also said many women were killed in numerous local conflicts, adding that extreme poverty also took numerous lives.

“On average 1,900 mothers out of 100,000 die during childbirth and the number of infant deaths is about 6,500 out of 100,000 births,” she said.

“Every day we lose 70 mothers and 700 children due to the lack of health services,” she told shocked delegates from over 114 countries.

Over three years after Taliban rule nearly 60 per cent of girls still do not go to school and 70 per cent of all families are mired in extreme poverty. That NAM itself is becoming a forum to hear pleas from ministers like Massouda, is history in the making.

The Kuala Lumpur meeting showed that for the first time in its 44-year existence, the Non- Aligned Movement had shifted its attention from merely politics to social issues. NAM was set up in 1961 at the height of Cold War out of fear of a nuclear holocaust perceived as the eventual outcome of the conflict between the US-led Western bloc and the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. However, the end of the Cold War had left NAM with a big question mark about its way forward.

The conference theme, ‘Empowering Women in Facing the Challenges of Globalization’, reflected the drive in NAM to find new relevance. Ministers and representatives from about 80 NAM member states attended the meet that was opened by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi who urged the world to focus on the ravages of HIV/AIDS among children and women and the plight of Muslim women whose downtrodden and exploitative state, he said, had remain unchanged or made worse by ignorance, Islamic fundamentalism and the forces of globalization.

At the close of the NAM ministerial meeting, participants passed the Putrajaya Declaration — a blueprint for empowering women that includes concrete actions and programmes to help uplift women in member countries.

Malaysia has also proposed a NAM Centre on Gender and Development to enhance women’s empowerment. The centre could work closely with policymakers, scholars, research centres and other interested groups to stimulate intellectual discussions, promote the exchange of ideas and become a centre for capacity building for women.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service