Titled "Veiled Rebellion," the photos tell the story of Afghan women -- their plight as merely "possessions" of men, but also seeds of hope. Interestingly for me, the photographer was on a mission to photograph maternal health and mortality issues; one of the first photographs of the essay shows Noor Nisa, age 18; her husband, whose first wife had died during childbirth, was determined to get her to the hopsital in Faizabad, 4 hours from their village. (87% of all deliveries happen at home, without a skilled birth attendant) Their borrowed car broke down, so the photographer ended up taking Nisa, her mother, and her husband to the hospital, where she delivered a healthy baby girl.
The other photos are not so happy. One shows 2o year old Bibi Aisha, whose husband beat her since she married him at age 12. One day he beat her so badly that she ran away to escape. To punish her for leaving without permission, her husband cut off her nose, ears, and hair, while his friends held her down. A haunting statistic on top of the photograph reads: "In eight out of ten cases, a family member is responsible for a violent attack on a woman."
Another shows 22 year old Maida Khal, imprisoned for "moral crimes" -- a.k.a. asking for a divorce. When she was 12, she was married to a paralyzed 70-year old, whose brothers beat her for being unable to carry her new husband.
But yet, hope. One photo shows female graduates of Kabul University's Class of 2010 on graduation day, wearing hijabs under their mortarboards, and faces proudly uncovered. While the Taliban had banned the education of women, classes resumed after the regime fell in 2001.
This all makes me think of my friend, Mir, a fellow Improvement Advisor student with IHI. His project is on reducing maternal mortality and morbidity in Kabul. His wife, a doctor herself, trained in Russia and returned to Kabul after the Taliban defeat. I remember working on a project with Dalberg during grad school -- being so struck by our work with UNFPA and learning that shockingly, expected life span for Afghani women is only 42 years (one of the lowest in the world and about twenty years under the global average). It's a vicious cycle -- a sick woman cannot be seen by a male doctor (unless a relative), but at the same time women were banned from studying to become doctors in the country.
Coupled with this, almost half of all deaths of Afghan women between 15 and 49 are caused by childbirth. At 1600-2200 per 100,000 live births, the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in Aghanistan is the highest in the world (the second highest is Nigeria, at 1,100. For comparison, India is 450; US is 11). To make matters worse, half of all Afghan children die before they reach the age of five due to lack of access to healthcare (source: UNDP MDG Progress Report).
Despite this, Mir and his colleagues in Kabul's public hospitals remain optimistic. There's progress, for sure, but still a long way to go.
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