Over the courses of history, many countries have terribly mistreated women. Women were considered as second-class citizens or men’s properties. Nowadays, women should have freedom and to live a life without fear of being abused, tortured or enslaved. But despite the world’s development, women’s rights violations are still occurring all over the world. In fact, thousands of women are still deprived of even the most basic human rights every day in Afghanistan, while their voices are completely ignored. These gender-based discrimination issues have been affecting Middle Eastern women’s lives in many negative ways for decades. They increase a woman’s risks to poverty, violence, health issues and lack of education as well (“Women’s Rights are Human’s”). In this essay, I will focus on the violations of women’s rights in Afghanistan , why it should be eradicated and what can be done about those issues.

Women’s rights in Afghanistan have always been a mutual international concern. Over the past decades, Afghan women have struggled to gain freedom and dignity. Unfortunately, the rulers of Afghanistan pay no concerns for women’s rights. But those who speak out are considered being against their religion, Islam (Boone). This is why Afghan women hardly ever protest or raise their voices while they were abused through many different Afghanistan’s governments. During the rule of the Mujahideen, who rose to power in 1992, women were raped and tortured by soldiers (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan”). In addition to that, they were banned from appearing on televisions and were forced to wear veils to cover their faces. (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan”).

After the fall of the Mujahideen, the Taliban took over Afghanistan and women were treated even worse. The Taliban immediately created laws which banned women from going to any kind of work except for medical-involved work. This greatly increased the women’s rate of poverty and also caused the number of teachers in the country dramatically dropped down, for women were usually teachers before the laws were applied. However, women who were teachers started to secretly open classes at their homes to educate mostly girls the basic knowledge. Unfortunately, these schools did not survive for very long. Illegal teachers who were caught by the Taliban were tortured, persecuted, imprisoned and in some cases, were killed. After finding out the existence of these schools, the Taliban also burnt them down; this then led to a serious education problem for the whole country. Besides, when the Taliban rose to rule the country, many educated, high-ranking women were forced to wander on the street, giving up their properties and sell everything they own. Suddenly, those women, who were once respected by societies, were then became beggars or even prostitutes in order to feed their familie. Another law that the Taliban has created to gain control over women did not allow women to leave their houses without their burqas or family male escorts. In fact, some women could never leave their homes for in some cases, they had no male relatives or husbands, or they couldn’t afford burqas (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan”).

After the fall of Taliban, Hamid Karzai took over Afghanistan and became the first democratically elected President of Afghanistan in 2004 (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan”). Elected by citizens, women’s rights violations were thought to be stopped under Karzai’s government. Ironically, the situation has gotten worse (Boone). In fact, Hamid Karzai even passed more laws  to restrict and gain control over women.

 On the run for president in 2009, Hamid Karzai has quietly issued an incredibly cruel regulation that granted the rights for Shia men to deny their wives’ food and basic needs if they refuse to obey their husbands sexual demands to win supports from the Shias, which are 10% of Afghanistan’s population. This means an Afghan woman is considered to be disobeyed if she is not ready to entertain her husband and fulfill his reasonable sexual enjoyment (Boone). In my opinion, I found this a very brutal and selfish act of President Karzai, for he used women as a tool to convince the Shias to vote for him, for he hurt millions of women for his own benefits. Not to mention the fact that he had won the election, according to my interpretation, many people must have supported his new laws or agree with his perspectives that women worth less than men. After the re-election, Karzai also created legislatures which stated that husbands and grandfathers are the ones who exclusively own the guardianships of their children. By now, Karzai had also created laws which allow women to go to work again, but they need to permission from their husbands. These laws have clearly underrated and offended a woman’s ability for turning women into tools to serve the men’s demands and needs. Desperate and suppressed, a surprising number of Afghan women had set themselves on fire after the brutal laws were passed to free themselves from the abuses and most of all, to accentuate the international community for help. Unfortunately, no one really knew about their deaths for they came underreported by the Afghan government (“Afghan Women: Far From”).

 A later report showed that almost half of the imprisoned women were accused for “moral violations” such as running away from home or adultery. There are many cases in Afghanistan, where women fled away to escape the abuses at home. Ironically, the ones that were responsible for the abuse did not have to face any legal actions while the victims are imprisoned for escaping from the abuser. Plus, Afghanistan’s legal system often punishes women who raised their voices about being raped or abused in many ways. This is why countless number of women chose to stay quiet and suffer the injustice rather than raising their voices (Peter).

 Women’s inequality does not only involve in sexual abusing, domestic violence or health, but it is also involved in income, labor and salary. Although women work as much as men do, or sometimes even harder than men, they often get paid only three third of men’s salary. Plus the difficulty in leaving homes to work, the poverty rate of women in Afghanistan is incredibly high. Poverty leads to many other dangerous factors such as lack of education and more risks of being abused. In fact, according to Global Pulse and a research in Afghanistan, 85% of women has no proper education (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan,”), 87% of Afghan women aren’t able to read or write when only 30 percent of Afghan girls have access to education. 70-80% of Afghan women have to face forced marriage and one in every three women experienced physical, psychological or sexual violence (Qazi).

I believe that nowadays, in the 21st century with countless advanced technology, we can, and we must, eradicate these women’s rights violations in Afghanistan. This is because women aren’t any weaker than men, they are also born human beings, therefore there are no reasons why they should be treated worse than men. In fact, history has shown that women can be as powerful as men in account of being influential like Marie Curie, the woman that has made a big change in the world’s science department for her research on radioactivity and was the first person who was honored for two Nobel awards, and many more. Besides, a strong country needs the incorporation of all citizens, which includes both gender – men and women. But if men are respected and women are abused and uneducated when women are almost half of the population in Afghanistan, the country cannot proceed to develop. Without women, life wouldn’t be possible either. They are the ones who carry babies for nine months, endure the pain of giving birth and the ones who are willing to take care of the children, who are willing to take care of you. Without the love and care of mothers, a child wouldn’t be able to grow up happily. Instead of abusing and taking advantages on women, why don’t people think about the hard times their mothers had gone through in order to take care of them, in order for them to grow? They deserve to be respected, cared and thanked. Besides, if these violations go on, Afghan women will have to live under the control of men and in fear of abuses and tortures when no one deserves to feel that way. By stopping the women’s rights violations in Afghanistan, we are bringing Afghan women peace, the freedoms they deserve and the chances to escape from poverty and win back their own dignity. In other words, by stopping those violations, we’re bringing the injustice to justice, we’re transforming the life of each Afghan woman.

In my opinion, I think that bringing justice to Afghan women wouldn’t be successful without the help of the international communities, revolutions and most of all, education. I strongly believe that one of the main reasons that led to women’s rights violations is the lack of education. Many Afghan women do not know or understand about the basic inalienable rights they inherit as human beings (Peter). For generations after generations, Afghan society has found justification to continue mistreating women (“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan,”). But it is partly because Afghan women do not know how to report to the police, or bring their cases to justices and get attention from the international communities that these situations has never stopped (Peter). To stop this problem, I think that international interferences and revolutions are needed. First of all, the only way to make the women’s real voices to be heard is to protest, demonstrate, or to be on televisions and news. In order for this to happen, the foreigners have to support them and help everyone to raise their awareness about their cases. Soon, this would be the international concern and the president would be forced to change his policies to limit their restrictions on women, or even better, eliminate all of the restrictions on women. The second way this situation can be stopped is the change of governments. In my opinion, Afghanistan needs a leader who understands and respects human rights, who care for every citizens no matter what their gender are. I believe that the government is the one who takes responsible for this act; the government is the one who can make the biggest changes.

In conclusion, I believe that it is our responsibilities to make our world a better place to stay. In order to do that, we need to incorporate to eradicate all the issues that are happening all around the world, which includes women’s rights. Women act as one of the most important role in everyone’s lives, they should be respected, not underrated. The key to open the doors to freedom for the Afghan women are in our hands. It is our job to help make the voices of those women who were hurt to be heard and together, gain dignity and freedom to all women and stop those women’s rights violations to reform a society where gender-based discriminations, domestic violence against women and women’s rights violations are eliminated once and for all.

Work cited:
“Afghan Women: Far From Equal.” Link TV. Global Pulse, n.d. Web. 18 May 2012.
<http://www.linktv.org/video/4249/afghan-women-far-from-equal>.

Boone, Jon. “Afghanistan passes ‘barbaric’ law diminishing women’s rights.”
theguardian. The Guardian, n.d. Web. 16 May 2012.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/14/
afghanistan-womens-rights-rape>.

Boone, Jon. “‘Worse than the Taliban’ – new law rolls back rights for Afghan
women.” theguardian. The Guardian, n.d. Web. 16 May 2012.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/31/
hamid-karzai-afghanistan-law>.

Peter, Tom A. “Afghan women are being jailed for ‘moral crimes’, says report.”
theguardian. The Gaurdian, n.d. Web. 19 May 2012.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/28/
afghan-women-jailed-moral-crimes>.

Qazi, Abdullah. “The Plight of the Afghan Woman.” Afghanistan Online. N.p., 9
Dec. 2010. Web. 18 May 2012. <http://www.afghan-web.com/woman/>.

“Women’s Rights are Human Rights.” Amnesty International. Amnesty
International USA, n.d. Web. 16 May 2012. <http://www.amnestyusa.org/
our-work/issues/women-s-rights>.

“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan.” Wikipedia. WikiMedia, MediaWiki, 23 May 2012.
Web. 18 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Women’s_rights_in_Afghanistan>

“Women’s Rights in Afghanistan, Then and Now: Has Anything Changed?” Link TV.
N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2012. <http://www.linktv.org/globalpulse/blog/
post/262/womens-rights-in-afghanistan-then-and-now-has-anything-changed>.

Shyness is a young girl with a beautiful, kind face. Her hair is braided by her mom neatly behind her back and she has a silver-white headband on her head. She looks as neat and pretty as usual. But she doesn’t seem to know that, since she barely pays any attention to her looks. Shyness doesn’t have that many friends since she’s afraid to meet new people and get to know them.

Shyness always prefers going to familiar places, seeing familiar faces. She feels most comfortable around her family at home, where she can be who she really is, express her true feelings without any hesitations and feel in control of herself. She knows what to expect there and feels sure of what to do or say. But most of the time, she would rather to be alone in her garden, sitting on the old picnic table, where she feels most comfortable to start to draw and write about own her imaginary world.

Shyness is afraid to meet new people. At home, every time she hears the doorbell ring, she attempts to run down the staircase real fast to open the door to see who the guest it. But she hesitates for a moment and decides to sit on the staircase’s step instead, trying to hide herself under the staircase’s handrail as she peeks to see who’s the guest as her mom or dad opens the front door. She knows that she’s going to get nervous again once she meets new people.

Hearing her own tiny, high voice as she starts talking makes herself wonder if she’d spoken the right words, if what she’s saying make any sense. The thoughts rush into her mind before she catches herself shaking and in a loss of words while she communicate with people. Besides, she usually answers others’ question with no more than three words. She hates herself for not having the courage to talk like others. She hates herself for always being in the corner alone while her classmates were on the playground playing with each other. She hates herself because she’s never fit in and always feel uncomfortable to communicate with people.

Today is one of the most beautiful days of April, and here she’s standing in front of the whole class, in her lovely white dress, with all eyes focusing on her. Shyness is asked to share her spring break to the whole class but she does not have the nerves to refuse Ms. Brown, who has always been her favorite teacher. But as she opens her mouth to speak, she realizes no words come out. She find herself blushing and speechless. Suddenly, she can’t think of any interesting things she did over the break. She tries hard to remember, staring at the ceiling above her head. But with all those eyes focusing on only her, she couldn’t help feeling scared and nervous. Shyness slightly trembles as she feels her cheeks burning with red blushes. The sweat of her palms as she grips her hands tightly behind her back made it even harder to think.

Oh! how she wishes she could have have the courage to stand up and talk like anyone else, or Ms. Brown would pick someone else but not her. Shyness stands there for what feels like ages before she hears Ms. Brown dismisses her back to her seat. Once she’s settled in her own seat again and Ms. Brown starts asking another kid to the front of the classroom, she quietly lets out out a sigh of relief.

Image by Marin Jr

Before, I had always thought that zoos are the places to help, rescue and preserve many different kinds of animals. But this article has changed my thoughts as I found out the bitter truth behind these zoos.

To preserve the endangered animals, zoos have to make tough calculations about which animals to save. The endangered species, of course, are chosen and the common ones are given up and left without any care. This may lead to a long-term major issue, extinction to the very common species.

“The result is that zookeepers, usually animal lovers to the core, are increasingly being pressed into making cold calculations about which animals are the most crucial to save.”- As opposed to many responses, I don’t think we should accuse the zoos for tending to kill the un-endangered species because it must have been very tough and to be in that situation when even the animal lovers to the core are forced to choose a certain kind of specie to save while leaving the other animals out with no health care at all because they have no choice but to choose the ones that are endangered and neglecting the others even if they don’t want to.

Although it is not the zoo’s fault for killing those species, I still think there are better ways these situations can be solved. Raising funds to build homes or more zoos to help and preserve more animal species would be a good idea because if a specie is not endanger doesn’t mean that we won’t save it until it reaches the risks of being extinct and we start to care for them. I believe just like how every human beings are born equal, every animals must be treated equal by human as well. Besides, in order to decrease the number of extinct animal species, we must save every animal species, even the most common ones, right now. Back to my solution, to raise funds, it is necessary to inform and raise people’s awareness about this issue so that they can participate in this movement to save the animals!

If this situation goes on, don’t be surprise to find out the current endangered animal species are saved, but maybe the most common species will be endangered. If we don’t do anything to stop it now, I bet the zoos will regret giving up the un-endangered animals but they have no choice! We, the people, are the only ones who can save these animals. So if you can do anything to help them, like spending a few dollars to raise funds, don’t ignore it, do it!

Are you a smoker or do you want to start smoking? If you are, then quit now and if you do then don’t!

Nowadays, there are over a billion people around the world who smoke cigarettes. While most people view cigarettes as a tool to temporarily relieve their stresses and worries, cigarettes do not bring you any permanent good. In fact, cigarettes affect your health in many negative ways. It also damages the people around you, the environment, and wastes your money on it.

Most of the people who smoke started smoking when they were young (at the age of 16 to early 20’s) for they found it thrilling because it was considered something new and rejected by society to teens. But soon, the fun turned into a bad habit as they started smoking whenever they are stressed

Image by AMagill

and worry. While enjoying the refreshment cigarettes bring, smokers underrate the harm cigarettes do to their body because smokers are most likely to have very high chances of having heart diseases, cancer and a lot of smokers died from emphysema.

First, cigarettes are one of the factors that lead to heart diseases. It makes the process of transferring blood from our hearts to any parts of our body harder and leads to high blood pressure and high heart rate. This increases the chances of getting heart attacks and strokes, which is extremely dangerous because many heart attacks can result in deaths. Do you know that you could be one of those 17.5 million people who died from heart diseases each year if you smoke? Quit smoking now to lower that chance!

The heart is not the only part that is badly-affected by cigarettes, our lungs are also destroyed from smoking. Almost all smokers have a chronic disease called emphysema. Emphysema leads to the difficulty in breathing in and out. Plus, cigarettes, which includes many toxic chemical products, is the biggest factor that leads to lung cancer – the one thing that kills at least 150,000 people per year in the U.S. If you are a non-smoker, you should never start smoking because you would increase your risk of getting lung cancer at least by 15 times!

Cigarettes can also affect our skin. The damages cigarettes do to smokers’ elastic tissues of skin made the wrinkles appear on the skin sooner than it would appear in non-smokers. Therefore, the skin would soon lose its healthy glow and a yellow-gray cast would replace it. These factors make smokers look a lot older than their actual age. Would you rather be old or be young? Of course, young. So you should quit smoking now! Quit smoking doesn’t only lower your risks of getting diseases but also make you look nicer, healthier!

 Many smokers do not know that smoking does not only affect yourself, but this bad habit affects the environment and the people around you as well. Second-hand smoke often happens in public places, where people often accidentally inhale the smoke that comes from smokers’ cigarettes in the air. As people breathe in the smoke that smokers exhale, they inhale hundreds of toxic chemicals that comes with the smoke. In other words, second-hand smoke is just like indirect smoking. In fact, just like smokers, secondhand smoke increases a person’s risk for asthma, cancer and heart and lung diseases. In conclusion, smoking does not only badly affect your own health, it pollutes the environment with toxic smoke and therefore damage the health of the people around you as well.

The other reason why you shouldn’t smoke is that you would waste your money on cigarettes for no benefits at all. Nowadays, an average pack of cigarette would cost around $7. Smokers smoke at least one pack a day, which would cost them $49 a week, $196 a month and $2,352 a year. Why would you spend more than two thousands dollars for cigarettes when it’s slowly killing you and damage the people around you? I bet there are a lot of useful ways to spend that amount of money instead of on cigarettes. Besides, consider the negative effects cigarettes bring, the expenses for cigarettes would rapidly increase as you add on the fees for medical treatments for the diseases that are caused by smoking. But if you quit smoking now, you would save more than three thousands dollars per year and I bet you would never regret your decision!

Smoking cigarettes can only bring you negative effects to your body, damage other people’s health, badly-affect the environment and is a waste of money. If you stop smoking now, you would lower your risk of getting life-threatening diseases than it would be if you continue smoking, you can also decrease the chances of getting diseases and illness for the people around you, make your living environment and the air you breathe in more fresh and clean and save you at least three thousand dollars a year. With all the bad influence cigarettes bring and the benefits quit smoking would do to you, stop smoking now if you had been smoking or don’t ever think twice about start smoking.

Image by "natureinimages"

This week’s  article, we look into the current environmental issues that are happening in our country’s neighbor, Cambodia. Right now, in Cambodia, many companies,with the direct assistance from the government, are cutting down trees and destroying the forests to collect logs and woods.

The first thing that came into my mind when reading this article was selfishness. This is because the companies that are destroying the forests to exploit resources had paid no considerations for the long-term affects and the impact their actions would bring among the nearby villages and even more important, the environment. The only thing they really care about was the money they collect from the resources because anyone who looks at the big picture and pays more concern about the people around you and the living environment won’t ever damage the environment. I think that people should care about the people around them more and be more aware of the responsibility of each person to build a better living community.

After reading about this terrifying situation in Cambodia, I realized our living environment is in danger. Everywhere in the world, not just Cambodia, people are chopping down trees and destroying forests when those are the things that help build up our lives. By destroying trees, people are decreasing the oxygen rate in the atmosphere because trees produce oxygen. The lack of oxygen would surely affect our health and lives in so many negative ways. Plus, a place without trees are mostly likely to face floods for trees can help prevent it. Therefore, trees act as an extremely important role in nature and it is our responsibility to protect it, not damage it. Unfortunately, not all people realize that. In fact, even the government of Cambodia is involved in illegal logging.

While telling the civilians they are protecting the land, the government actually assisted the companies in exploiting the forests illegally. I found this very surprising because I thought the government should be the one who is responsible to stop this awful situation from happening. Plus, the government actually did the opposite of what they had promised. Instead of protecting the land, they actually destroyed it. This affects the people who live in the nearby area ,who depends on the forest, ’s lives very badly since the forest might be their daily resources. I think that by telling one thing to the people and do the other thing behind their backs, the government is losing trusts from their people. And once, trust between the government and the people is lost, demonstrations, protests and revokes would rise. This would easily lead to chaos in one’s country.

I think that illegal logging should be a world-wide concern for everyone to look at. It’s time to make a change and save our living environment before trees are nowhere to be seen, before it’s too late. People should come together and protest, help each other to arrest the bad companies and stop them from damaging our living environment. More importantly, it is time for the government to stop involving in these illegal activities and take responsible to stop this awful situation from happening.