As Hillary Clinton prepares to attend Tuesday’s Kabul Conference, Afghan women are delivering a plain message to government and international officials: Women’s voices should be heard.
“We have to be honest. With respect to the Kabul Conference, we have not been consulted,” said Soraya Pakzad, founder of a women’s shelter in the western Afghan city of Herat. Her comment came during an unusually heated question-and-answer session with Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal and United Nations representative Staffan de Mistura marking the end of a two-day women’s conference. “We want to be involved in policy-making. We don’t want our presence to be purely symbolic.”
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