Women's needs integral to U.N. work in Afghanistan

It was recorded in 1994 during one of the many ethnic conflicts of that time. A close-up shot on an international TV news channel showed a very little child crying at the side of a dusty footpath. A longer shot revealed the soles of hundreds of feet walking past, running from danger in their homeland. As they fled, few may have noticed that child, who could very likely have been the orphan of one of the women who had died on the road to safety.

The infant, its mother, other children and women make up 75 percent of the 20 million to 25 million internally displaced people and more than 12 million refugees across the world.

That scene was from yesterday. Today a similar scenario is being replayed as Afghan refugees are running into Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In the coming weeks, about 1.5 million of them -- about one-quarter of Washington state's population -- will flee in anticipation of military operations. Apart from those leaving, about 7 million others are expected to flee their homes to wherever they can find safety in Afghanistan.

The world is mobilizing its resources to provide relief to these moving nations, especially as winter arrives. Tents, food, medicines and water are being readied. But, like the child refugee on the road in 1994, women's reproductive health needs are often overlooked.

Of the 1.5 million leaving Afghanistan, more than a half are women, with about 66,000 pregnant. Of those, 10,000 have high-risk pregnancies; they suffer from anemia and malnutrition, and are in danger of hemorrhaging, and some need Caesarean sections. Of the 7 million seeking safety within Afghanistan, more than 300,000 are pregnant women, with 50,000 at high risk.

With winter approaching, the United Nations has begun an appeal for $584 million to provide relief to the Afghan people. Such relief is providing food, water, medicines, tents and blankets. The United Nations Population Fund is making provisions for needs that are often overlooked -- the reproductive health needs of women -- as part of its global efforts to save women's lives. It has begun an appeal for $4.5 million for such essential services as emergency obstetric care, basic equipment and supplies to help women deliver babies in safe environments.

This critical action is meant to enable women to bear healthy babies and live. It is a measure to reduce the number of 515,000 women who die yearly from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.

What makes women so vulnerable? It is their lower social and economic status. Of the 1.2 billion people who live on less than $1 a day, two-thirds are women. They are also overrepresented in the ranks of the world's illiterate.

Experience has shown over and over that educating girls and empowering women translates directly and quickly into better nutrition for families, better health, declining fertility and poverty reduction. And the less the poverty, the less the instability that generates conflicts, destroys states, engenders violence and unleashes floods of refugees.

Last year, 147 heads of state and government agreed that educating and empowering women will break the cycle of poverty, disease and violence and, in the long run, improve the economies of nations and produce fewer orphans on the trail of fleeing refugees.

Many leaders have lent their support to the campaigns to assist Afghan refugees. They must remain engaged and draw attention to the continuing needs of women and the broader need to empower them to help reduce the poverty that leads to conflicts and orphans on dusty refugee trails. Saving women's lives should not become the abandoned orphan of the global agenda.

Abubakar Dungus is a spokesman for the United Nations Population Fund.

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