About 200 women from across the country are expected to gather at the Delta Ocean Pointe Hotel in Victoria on Friday and Saturday to discuss ways to support women in Afghanistan.
The Victoria 2013 Symposium of the Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan) will feature about a dozen speakers, including Sally Armstrong, a member of the Order of Canada, journalist, human rights activist, and author of a number of books on the struggles of Afghan women.
There are about 25 members of the Victoria chapter, said Amanda Eyolfson.
“We fundraise for general education and books and libraries in Afghanistan,” Eyolfson said.
There are about 1,000 members in 13 chapters across Canada and 100 of those are expected to attend the symposium. Another 100 seats have been reserved by members of the public.
The keynote speaker is Lauryn Oates, the organization’s projects director, whose focus is on international development, women’s rights and education in conflict zones.
“We’re working on behalf of women and girls in Afghanistan,” Oates said.
Many of the members are in Afghanistan helping to give girls and women there a better life through a dozen education projects, she said.
The conditions there are “astronomically better” than they were a decade ago, Oates said.
“There’s been a lot of change in urban areas, especially,” she said.
“Women have rejoined public life. Girls’ schools have reopened, with 3.5 million girls in kindergarten to Grade 12.”
There’s still a long way to go since more than half Afghan girls are not enrolled in school, she said.
“Violence against women is still very common here and there’s still a lot of resistance [to change] in government and in families,” Oates said.
The violence most often comes from within families and stems from a historic power balance where males have more power than women, Eyolfson said.
“We do teacher training, we run schools, we support an orphanage, we have literacy classes for adult women and out-of-school girls,” Oates said.
The message the organization wants to send is the importance of standing by the women and girls of Afghanistan, she said.
“I think most of the time, people get exposed to the violence and the war and the really grim side of the news, and they don’t hear about all the progress that’s been made,” Oates said.
Many are worried about what will happen when international forces withdraw in 2014.
“We’re at the midnight hour, a critical time of the intervention and all of these gains are at risk if the international community turns its back on the country,” she said.
