[women-rights] Afghanistan: More women voters registering, but overall numbers still low

AFGHANISTAN: MORE WOMEN VOTERS REGISTERING, BUT OVERALL NUMBERS STILL LOW
New York, Jan 12 2004  3:00PM

The number of women signing up to vote in Afghanistan's national elections
has increased, but overall registration remains slow given that the ballot
is scheduled for later this year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan (UNAMA) has announced.

A UNAMA spokesman reported yesterday that women comprise 22 per cent of the
320,770 Afghans who have registered to vote since the process began at the
start of December.

This is up from mid-December, when only 70,000 people had registered, just
13 per cent of them women. Bamiyan continues to have the greatest
proportion of female voters, with women making up 43 per cent of all who
have registered in that city.

Voter registration so far remains restricted to 52 centres in Afghanistan's
eight major cities - the capital, Kabul, Bamiyan, Gardez, Herat, Jalalabad,
Kandahar, Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. Spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva
told a press briefing in Kabul that registration would be progressively
extended to provincial and rural areas once security conditions there have
improved.

A civic education process is underway to try to show Afghans the importance
of registering to vote. Almost 20,000 face-to-face meetings about voter
registration have been held, and there have been thousands of other
community mobilization events and local briefings, according to UNAMA.

The spokesman stressed the importance of local community and political
leaders backing the process as a means of encouraging others to register.



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