“Women’s Rights Are Not Just ‘Western Values'”: A Warning Not to Learn the Wrong Lessons From Afghanistan

In the wake of the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban, many in the international community and media have said that efforts in Afghanistan to secure women’s rights and human rights were doomed to fail because of the traditions and culture in my country. This is absolutely the wrong lesson to take away from our experience in Afghanistan. Human rights and women’s rights are not “Western values.”