Thank you.
As I just mentioned to you last evening, up till now, after the international community came into Afghanistan, we have had about 21 TV channels. One is governmental, while the rest are private.
Of all these private TV channels, most of them belong to warlords and to extremist leaders in Afghanistan. They campaign for their own views and opinions, their own vision, in which a woman has no place in their philosophy. They are against women's rights. That's why I propose that we start women's TV in Afghanistan.
Also, we have about 50 universities being opened by these powerful groups of previous military leaders and extremist leaders. That's why we were thinking of a women's university in Kabul: for women to have another opportunity for higher education.
These are the big projects that we have within our organization. Other projects that we want to contribute to the positive changes for women's lives in the country are community-based women's literacy programs, as we have an illiteracy rate among women in Afghanistan of 89%. That's why we wanted this to be targeted.
Also, the poverty in Afghanistan has a female face. Women of Afghanistan are not owners. As you know, in Afghanistan everything is male-dominated. In the family, all property belongs to the males. Any income or any property finally goes to the males. We wanted to have economic empowerment of women, so we had a community-based national program for the economic empowerment of women through vocational training and other types of initiatives.
Also, the enhancement of women's political participation is very, very important. We see that women in the leadership, women with decision-making power, will make the long way short for bringing a positive change to women's lives in the country. Parliamentary elections are coming, so we wanted to mobilize women's participation through voting and also to support women candidates, to enable them to make their campaigns and help them get their messages to their voters.
These are the projects we have ahead of us. We need funding. We need support. Without support, we cannot go ahead. We have the network. We have the human resource capacity. And we know our society: we can implement well.
We have the ideas for the concepts to bring about the change, but we need international partners to support us in terms of funding. Also, when we are under the pressure of extremism or male-dominated types of thinking and powers in the country, we need some political support from outside to protect us. That's what we need ahead of us in Afghanistan: to do it within an organization, like my women's group initiatives in the country.
We also need political support to place women in political power. Without getting support from this part of the world, we don't have any other source.... Inside Afghanistan, nobody is supporting women. The real properties of Afghanistan's government are not women-friendly: the inside thinking, the behind-the-curtains thinking, of the government is not women-friendly at all, from the root.
Even the ones calling themselves liberal democrats are not thinking in the way that I'm thinking for women. They always talk about very little things for women--signing documents, putting laws on paper--just to be responsive to the international community, as they have signed some of the laws. But enforcement and implementation of those policies are a challenge. There is no political will. There is a lack of political will for women's rights in the country within the Government of Afghanistan.
Political support to put women in decision-making power will be greatly needed and will need to be supported from this part of the world.