The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on August 1 approved, by voice vote, a bill (S. 2712) that would provide $2.5 billion through FY2005 for aid to Afghanistan. The House passed a similar version on May 22, which would have authorized $1.1 billion over four years (see The Source, 5/24/02).
Prior to approving the bill, the committee approved, by voice vote, an amendment by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), that would allocate $15 million in each of FY2002 through FY2005 for the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The amendment would provide $5 million in each of the four years for the National Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan. The amendment also specifies a number of areas for which assistance should be provided, including political and human rights, health care, education, training, security, and shelter.
The Boxer amendment calls for an emphasis on assistance to support the construction and rehabilitation of medical facilities; expand immunization programs; establish, maintain, and expand schools, including technical and vocational training and special education, for girls and women; develop and implement programs to protect women and girls against abuse, discrimination, and trafficking; provide emergency shelters for women; support women-led and local nongovernmental organizations; disseminate information on the rights of women; and support the National Human Rights Commission in investigating and monitoring human rights and women’s rights abuses.
While the House-passed bill does not include language similar to the Boxer amendment, the Senate measure, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), closely mirrors the House-passed legislation. Both measures make several policy declarations with respect to Afghanistan, including one that the “United States and the international community should support efforts that advance the development of democratic civil authorities and institutions in Afghanistan and the establishment of a new broad-based, multi-ethnic, gender-sensitive, and fully representative government in Afghanistan.”
Under purposes of assistance, both bills state that there should be a “particular emphasis on meeting the educational, health, and sustenance needs of women and children to better enable their full participation in Afghan society” and that specific resources should be provided for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan to “carry out its responsibilities for legal advocacy, education, vocational training, and women’s health programs.”
Additionally, the measures would set forth five principles of assistance. Once of those principles pertains to the role of women and states that “assistance should increase the participation of women at the national, regional, and local levels in Afghanistan.”
Both bills would encourage the involvement of women in the decisionmaking process and would support programs to expand economic and educational opportunities, as well as health programs, for women and girls. The bills also would encourage the establishment of microenterprise programs to benefit women.
Both bills would provide humanitarian assistance for a number of services, including preventive health care and maternal and child health services. Aid also would be provided for repatriation and resettlement of refugees and internally displaced persons, counternarcotics efforts, reestablishment of food security and the agriculture sector, and reconstruction of the basic infrastructure.
