New York
22 April 2009
Despite some progress since the Taliban was ousted in 2002, the lives of most Afghan women remain difficult, even desperate. Many are illiterate, very poor, and lack even basic medical services. Their personal rights and freedoms remain in question: In the last eight months, Taliban militants in Kandahar have attacked schoolgirls with acid, and assassinated the female police chief and a prominent women's rights leader. A new law signed by President Hamid Karzai would legalize child marriage among the Shi'ite minority, and restrict Shi'ite women from working or going to school without a husband's permission.
Sakena Yacoobi |
In 1992, Yacoobi had made a comfortable life as an immigrant in the United States, teaching at a college in Michigan. But she missed her country, and wanted to help other Afghans exiled, like her, by decades of war. Visiting Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, she met women and girls who had nothing, not even have the freedom to walk outside the family compound.
"Women were sick, women were exhausted, women were depressed,?Yacoobi said in an interview during a recent trip to the U.S. "They didn't have education, and they were all cooped up in a camp area inside the tent. And when I went and visited them, I felt this is the area that I really want to work in."
Yacoobi began working for Afghan women after visiting refugee camps in Pakistan |
"In Afghanistan, the women and children are suffering the most,?Yacoobi said. "When I was a child, I saw the suffering of women in Afghanistan. Every woman who was going to deliver a baby, out of ten women, five of them die, because there wasn't a facility for them. There wasn't doctor. There wasn't medicine.?br>
A.I.L. supports community health centers and schools |
Yacoobi risked her life in the mid-1990's when she set up and ran a network of 80 underground home schools in Afghanistan after the Taliban banned female education. Like other advocates of women's rights and education, she lives with the threat of terror by Taliban militants. Yacoobi says that her organization tries to minimize that risk by staying out of areas where the Taliban is most active. A.I.L also works to foster participation by the entire community in the local health care and learning centers that it sponsors. And it preempts objections to its work by including men in classes that discuss the Koran's teachings on women.
Sakena Yacoobi, leading an Afghan Institute of Learning workshop |
At a dinner in New York recently, Yacoobi was awarded the fourth annual Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership, given with Claremont McKenna College. The award grants her $250,000 to be used for her work. She accepted it "in the name of all the courageous women of Afghanistan,?whom she said are ready to lead their country, if they are given the education and rights to do so.
Yacoobi headed back to her work in Afghanistan later that week, returning as well to the danger she rarely mentions. She is protected by bodyguards, and long ago moved her family to the U.S. for their safety.