[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 144 (Thursday, October 25, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11105-S11109]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. HUTCHISON (for herself, Ms. Mikulski, Mrs. Boxer, Ms. 
        Cantwell, Mrs. Carnahan, Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Collins, Mrs. 
        Feinstein, Ms. Landrieu, Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Murray, Ms. Snowe, 
        and Ms. Stabenow):
  S. 1573. A bill to authorize the provision of educational and health 
care assistance to the women and children of Afghanistan; read the 
first time.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, no one in America can have read a 
newspaper or seen a television report about the plight of women in 
Afghanistan, and children, without being horrified. All 13 women of the 
Senate, led by myself and Senator Mikulski, are introducing a bill 
today that would authorize the President to give education, health care 
benefits, and other help to the women and children of Afghanistan, and 
to those in refugee camps, at the first opportunity we possibly can.
  Women are not able to be educated under the Taliban. Women are not 
able to get health care under the Taliban. They are not able to work.
  I am going to talk about some of the things that have happened. But 
my colleague from Maryland and my colleague from the State of 
Washington have other commitments, and I want to yield to my colleague 
from Maryland who is a cosponsor of this bill. Every woman in the 
Senate is sponsoring this bill: Senator Boxer, Senator Collins, Senator 
Landrieu, Senator Feinstein, Senator Stabenow, Senator Clinton, Senator 
Cantwell, Senator Snowe, Senator Murray, Senator Lincoln, Senator 
Carnahan, and of course my key cosponsor, Senator mikulski from 
Maryland.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor to the Senator from Maryland.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland is recognized.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President I rise to be a proud original cosponsor 
with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in introducing the Afghan Women and 
Children Relief Act. This act will provide education and assistance and 
health care to the women and children of Afghanistan.
  I have stood with the Senator from Texas on other issues related to 
the employment of women. We worked on economic security, pension 
security, health care opportunity, and educational opportunity for 
women and children as we worked on other issues related to the economic 
issues of our own States. Today I join with her, speaking on behalf of 
all of the women of the Senate--and I know all of the men of the Senate 
who will join with us--to see this crisis in Afghanistan is an 
opportunity to lift up the women and children from what has happened 
under the Taliban regime.
  The Taliban regime represents repression of all people and 
particularly is most brutal to women and children. Taliban restrictions 
on women's participation in society make it nearly impossible for women 
to exercise their basic human rights. Restrictions on Afghan freedom of 
expression, association, and movement deny women full participation in 
their society. They don't even have access to the basic ability to 
work, go to school, and have health care.
  The facts speak for themselves. Afghanistan has one of the highest 
infant mortality rates in the world. Only 5 percent of the rural people 
have access to safe drinking water. It is estimated hat 42 percent of 
all deaths in Afghanistan, up until this terrible situation was because 
of contaminated food and water. Over one-third of the Afghan children 
under 5 suffer from malnutrition.
  I could go on with the data from the World Health Organization and 
others. This is not about statistics, this is about the people of 
Afghanistan, particularly the women. Because their human rights have 
been denied, we need to work with our own Government and the NGOs to 
make sure, as we work to create a new world order in Afghanistan, that 
women and children will have access to education and health care.
  Often people have said the women face these repressions under the 
guise of traditional customs. Let me say this: I don't believe that. In 
an article in the New York Times by scholars Jane Goodwin and Jessica 
Neuwirth entitled ``The Rifle and the Veil,'' they point out that the 
very visible repression against women is not about religion, ``it is a 
political tool for achieving and consolidating power.''
  I ask unanimous consent that that op-ed be printed in the Record at 
the end of my statement.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See Exhibit 1)
  Mr. MIKULSKI. They point out that under the guise of religion, using 
a distorted view of the Koran, women are forced into subjugation. Women 
in Afghanistan can't work in their own professions. Women and girls 
can't go to school. Women who are capable of teaching in school are 
forbidden to do so. Widows, who are deprived of their ability to earn a 
living, have been beaten when they have resorted to begging to feed 
themselves and their children.

[[Page S11106]]

  Afghan women and children have fled to escape this repression, but 
their plight as refugees is not much better. At the camps, either in 
Pakistan or other countries or in no-man's land, they depend on 
international assistance for survival, but their future is bleak. 
Secretary Albright went to those Afghan camps. I spoke to her about it. 
She talked about those dire circumstances. And she led the effort to 
help the Afghan people.
  We now have an opportunity to create a new world order. This is what 
this legislation is all about. America will demonstrate our solidarity 
and our support to these women and children. As America leads the 
international coalition against al-Qaida and the Taliban regime, let's 
use this as the opportunity to help the women and children there.
  Let me conclude by saying this. As our Govenment--and I salute 
President Bush on what he is doing--works to create a new government in 
Afghanistan, if we are having a new government, let us insist that 
there not be the old rules, the old repression. We respect religion, we 
respect the traditions of the Muslim Community, but I do not believe 
that includes denying health care and education to the women.
  If we are going to have a new world order, let's start with making 
sure we help the women and children. I thank Senator Hutchison for 
taking the lead on this legislation.
  On a personal note, I particularly want to thank Senator Hutchison at 
this time, when I have been displaced from my own office, for the 
wonderful courtesy she has extended to my staff to be able to work in 
some of her rooms at the Russell Building. I say to you, Senator 
Hutchison, not only has the space meant a lot to us, but so did your 
graciousness in making it available.
  See, Mr. President, this is what the terrorists don't understand. 
They can't stop us. We are the red, white, and blue party. If you look 
at Hutchison, Mikulski, and the other 11 women of the Senate, the 
Taliban can't stop us from helping the women of the world. I yield the 
floor.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the New York Times, Oct. 19, 2001]

                         The Rifle and the Veil

                 (By Jan Goodwin and Jessica Neuwirth)

       Anyone who has paid attention to the situation of women in 
     Afghanistan should not have been surprised to learn that the 
     Taliban are complicit in terrorism. When radical Muslim 
     movements are on the rise, women are the canaries in the 
     mines. The very visible repression of forced veiling and loss 
     of hard-won freedoms coexists naturally with a general 
     disrespect for human rights. This repression of women is not 
     about religion; it is a political tool for achieving and 
     consolidating power.
       Sher Abbas Stanakzai, then the Taliban regime's deputy 
     foreign minister, admitted as much in a 1997 interview. ``Our 
     current restrictions of women are necessary in order to bring 
     the Afghan people under control,'' he said. ``We need these 
     restrictions until people learn to obey the Taliban.''
       In the same way that many Islamic extremist crusades use 
     the oppression of women to help them gain control over wider 
     populations, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden are now 
     employing the tactics of terrorism to gain control.
       The Taliban did not start the oppression of Afghan women, 
     nor have they been its only practitioners.
       In 1989, Arab militants working with the Afghan resistance 
     to the Soviet Union based in Peshawar, Pakistan--and helping 
     to finance the resistance fighters--issued a fatwa, or 
     religious ruling stating that Afghan women would be killed if 
     they worked for humanitarian organizations. At that time, a 
     third of the Afghan population of 15 million were displaced 
     from their homes, and many were heavily dependent on 
     humanitarian groups for food and other necessities. Among the 
     3.5 million of these refugees who were then living in 
     Pakistan, many were war widows supporting their families by 
     working for the aid groups. After the fatwa, Afghan women 
     going to work were shot at and several were murdered. Some 
     international aid groups promptly stopped employing Afghan 
     women, and though many women were infuriated, most complied 
     after being intimidated by the violent attacks. Soon 
     afterward, another edict in Peshawar forbade Afghan women to 
     ``walk with pride'' or walk in the middle of the street and 
     said they must wear the hijab, the Arab black head and body 
     covering and half-face veil. Again, most women felt they had 
     no choice but to comply.
       In 1990, a fatwa from Afghan leaders in Peshawar decreed 
     that women should not attend schools or become educated, and 
     that if they did, the Islamic movement would meet with 
     failure. The document measured 2 feet by 3 feet to 
     accommodate the signatures of about 200 mullahs and political 
     leaders representing the majority of the seven main 
     mujahedeen parties of Afghanistan. The leading school for 
     Afghan girls in Peshawar, where many Afghan refugees still 
     lived, was sprayed with Kalashnikov gunfire. It closed for 
     months, and its principal was forced into hiding.
       When an alliance of mujahedeen groups took over in Kabul in 
     1992, it forced women out of news broadcasting and government 
     ministry jobs and required them to wear veils. But it was the 
     Taliban who institutionalized the total oppression of women 
     after Kabul fell to them four years later, and who required 
     the total coverage of the now familiar burqa.
       Now, as Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans look to the 
     future of Afghanistan, most plans call for a broad based new 
     government giving representation to all of Afghanistan's 
     ethnic groups and major political parties, including the 
     Taliban. No one, however, has called for the participation of 
     women, even though women, after many years of war, now almost 
     certainly make up the majority in the adult Afghan 
     population.
       Afghan women gradually gained rights in the first decades 
     of 20th century. Women helped write their country's 
     Constitution in 1964. They served in parliament and the 
     cabinet and were diplomats, academics, professionals, judges 
     and even army generals. All of this happened well before the 
     Soviets arrived in 1979, with their much-touted claim of 
     liberating Afghan women.
       Many of the forces now opposing the Taliban include 
     signatories of the later fatwas that deprived Afghan women of 
     their rights. History is repeating itself.
       Any political process that moves forward without the 
     representation and participation of women will undermine any 
     chances that the principles of democracy and human rights 
     will take hold in Afghanistan. It will be the first clue that 
     little has changed.

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for 
her kind remarks. We are all in this, and one of the things we are 
trying to do is help our colleagues who still are out of their offices, 
who have not received mail for over a week, who do not have the places. 
We are happy to do that and especially because my colleague from 
Maryland has had two postal workers who have died at the Brentwood 
Station. At a time of huge crisis in her State, she is left without an 
office. We all want to back her and help her and help her constituents 
in every possible way.
  I will take a few moments, because I deferred to the Senator from 
Maryland, to talk about some of the statistics in Afghanistan that have 
caused us to highlight this issue. We have seen repression of women in 
other countries, but we have never seen the repression that is 
happening in Afghanistan today. The pictures of women being beaten on 
the streets because their burqa was opened a little bit by the wind, or 
beaten on the streets because the religion police heard a clicking of 
heels of shoes on the sidewalk and believed the woman must be wearing 
high-heeled shoes--this is unbelievable.
  In one account I read in a journal, a widow who did not have a male 
relative to escort her to the hospital watched her small son die of 
dehydration. She tried to make the journey to the hospital by herself 
but was beaten by the religion police as she left her home.
  This is not a country that should be allowed, with the Taliban, to do 
this to its own people. That is why we are standing here today to say 
we want to come in and make sure the women and children of this country 
have opportunities for health care, for education. We are not trying to 
put our religion on other people. We are not trying to say you have to 
do it our way. But there are some basic human rights that everyone 
accepts, and they are that a woman is equal to a man, that a woman 
should be able to have basic health care, she should be able to take 
her children to see a physician, she herself should be able to go to a 
physician. That is not the case today in Afghanistan. She can't see a 
physician because she is not allowed to see a male physician and the 
woman physicians are gone because the Taliban will not allow women to 
work.
  Afghanistan today has a 16-percent infant mortality rate and a 25-
percent children mortality rate.
  We cannot allow that to stand. That is why the women of the Senate 
are standing together to say when the aid comes in that we want to make 
sure the women get the aid in health care, that they are allowed to be 
educated, and that they will be allowed to support themselves and their 
children in a respectful way, and not be required to beg on the streets 
and sell themselves into prostitution, which is happening today.

[[Page S11107]]

  That is why we feel so strongly abut this and why we are standing 
together and hoping that we can pass this bill with the help of the 
Foreign Relations Committee very quickly--so the women and children in 
the refugee camps in Afghanistan know that when America helps, it will 
be help for them too because they are also equal people.
  I yield up to 3 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, 
is recognized for 3 minutes.
  Ms. STABENOW. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I want to, first, thank my colleague, Senator Hutchison, for her 
leadership and for the eloquent words of Senator Mikulski who spoke 
earlier.
  This is a wonderful example for working together. We are in the 
Chamber today not as Democrats or Republicans but as the women of the 
Senate speaking because we believe it is our responsibility to speak up 
on behalf of the women and children of Afghanistan who are being 
terrorized by their own government, the Taliban.
  Senator Hutchison spoke very eloquently about the statistics and 
about what is happening. I am honored to represent in Michigan a very 
large Muslim-American population. They assure me this is not Islam. It 
is not the words of the Koran. This is an extremist, perverted group of 
people who have twisted the words. They hide behind the religion, which 
is a very perverse and twisted view of the world that is 
disenfranchising half of their population.
  We come together to indicate that, as they move to a new coalition 
government, we expect and we will demand on behalf of the women and the 
children of the world that the women and children of Afghanistan are 
not left out of this new government; that the women who are physicians 
in Afghanistan will be allowed to treat their patients; that the 
country will benefit from the women who have been educated and who have 
the skills to help rebuild that country; and, that we empower the next 
generation of girls by making sure they are educated and will have the 
skills and knowledge they need to help rebuild the country of 
Afghanistan.
  We know that once the Taliban has been defeated there will be much 
work to be done. If they continue to exclude half of their population, 
they are not only committing a travesty against them but they are 
placing their own country in jeopardy by not using the talents and the 
abilities that are there.
  I, once again, thank all of my colleagues. It is wonderful to see 
everyone in the Chamber and to see a unified effort. I know we will 
continue to stay focused until we make sure the outrageous violence and 
atrocities that have been committed are stopped, and that the women and 
children of Afghanistan have the opportunity to live and be healthy and 
successful in their country.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from 
Maine.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maine, Ms. Collins, is 
recognized for 2 minutes.
  Ms. COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I commend my colleague from Texas and my colleague 
from Maryland for their extraordinary leadership in shining the 
spotlight on a very dark, dark part of the Earth.
  We, the women of the Senate, represent different States, different 
ideologies, and are from different backgrounds, but we are united in 
our determination to expose the horrendous treatment of the women and 
children of Afghanistan. We are determined to help them in every way 
possible.
  It was our colleague from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, who first brought 
to my attention an excellent CNN documentary called ``Women Behind the 
Veil,'' which demonstrated the appalling treatment by the Taliban of 
the women of Afghanistan. Women are not allowed to be educated.
  That, to me, says it all because by denying women an education, you 
are denying them knowledge, awareness, and opportunity.
  I am happy to join with the Senator from Texas, my colleague, Mrs. 
Hutchison, and the Senator from Maryland, my colleague, Ms. Mikulski, 
in this excellent initiative. I hope all of our colleagues will join in 
supporting this legislation.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for her 
remarks, and the Senator from Michigan.
  I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from California.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, 
is recognized for 2 minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  Let me add my thanks to Senators Hutchison and Mikulski for their 
leadership on this important piece of legislation. Let me pledge to my 
friend from Texas and my friend from Maryland, and all the women in the 
Senate who are behind this, as the only woman on the Foreign Relations 
committee, that I will work with them to ensure we move this forward to 
markup.
  The committee has a very good record when it comes to dealing with 
this issue. In 1999, Senator Brownback and I coauthorized a resolution 
condemning the practices of the Taliban. It went through the Senate 
very fast. We pointed out some of the issues that my colleagues have 
pointed out today about the treatment of women. It said the United 
States should never recognize the Taliban if they continue this type of 
treatment of women.
  Yesterday, in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, Senator 
Brownback and I were able to pass two amendments: one that called for 
women to be part of a new postwar Afghanistan government; and, second, 
a training program.
  We actually funded that for women leaders in Afghanistan. But unless 
we pass this bill ensuring the health of the women in Afghanistan who 
have been denied health care--there is a law under the Taliban that 
says a woman may not go to a male doctor. She may not go to a male 
doctor. Yet they have said to the women doctors that they can no longer 
practice and they can no longer learn medicine.
  What kind of situation is this? Women are forced to wear the burqas. 
You see them more and more on television. I put one on to get the sense 
of how it feels. I say to my friend from Texas that it feels as if you 
are nonexistent. It feels as if you are a nobody. You are no one.
  In closing, let me say that this important piece of legislation must 
be heard soon by the Foreign Relations Committee. We must act on it. We 
must ensure that women who have been mistreated and who have been made, 
in essence, invisible must get the health care they deserve as well as 
their children. To carry that out, the Boxer-Brownback amendment which 
we agreed to yesterday must be part of an emerging new government.
  My thanks to my friend from Texas. This a very strong bill. It has 
bipartisan support. I am proud to be a cosponsor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California 
for her efforts, along with Senator Brownback, to bring the plight of 
Afghan women to the forefront. The bill that we have before us I hope 
can be moved expeditiously. I want any dollars that go to Afghanistan 
or to the refugees who are Afghans in camps outside the country to help 
these women who have been so abused.
  I am stunned at some of the statistics. Forty-two percent of all 
deaths in Afghanistan are due to diarrheal diseases caused by 
contaminated food and water. This is 2001. Contaminated food and water 
is the most preventable kind of affliction that we could ever imagine. 
We have clean food and water. Forty-two percent of the people who die 
from something so preventable is just stunning.
  As we have said, before the Taliban came, women could be educated. 
Schools were coeducational. Women accounted for 7 percent of the 
teaching force. Women represented 50 percent of government workers, and 
40 percent of the physicians were women. But today, the Taliban 
prohibits women from working in any occupation.
  Clearly, the Afghan people, before the Taliban, had basic human 
rights. The women and children were treated at least with respect. But 
when the Taliban came in and prevented women

[[Page S11108]]

from being educated, prevented women from working, and prevented them 
from having health care, you wonder what kind of beasts are these? What 
kind of beasts would do this to other human beings? What kind of beast 
would let a little child die because the mother had no one to escort 
them to the hospital?
  We cannot conceive of this kind of terrorism to the people who are 
their own people, much less what they have harbored against America.
  So, Mr. President, I am proud the women of the Senate are coming 
together to speak for the women of Afghanistan, to say that our dollars 
are going to come and help rebuild Afghanistan.
  We have no problem with the people of Afghanistan. We feel sorry for 
the people of Afghanistan living under this regime of the Taliban. That 
is why we are trying to root the Taliban out because they have harbored 
terrorists who have killed innocent Americans and innocent people from 
around the world. But when we do, we are going to make sure that women 
and children have the basic respect and the basic human rights that 
everyone in the world should have, and American dollars coming in will 
be dollars that will help bring a quality of life that is the basic 
decency that we all expect in our lives.
  I know the bill will stay at the desk. I hope to work with the 
members of the Foreign Relations Committee to have an expedited 
procedure.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today with the other 13 women 
Senators and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas to introduce a bill 
that will authorize the use of existing funds in the foreign operations 
bill for the education and health care services of Afghan women.
  There is no doubt that the Taliban regime has been particularly 
heinous to the women of Afghanistan. Women are not allowed in public, 
girls are not sent to school, and the basic human rights that are 
afforded to women across the world, especially women here in America, 
are denied.
  The record is clear, women and girls in Afghanistan are abused 
regularly by the Afghan Government. It is my hope that the monies made 
available by this bill will help ameliorate the lives of the Afghan 
women by bettering their educational opportunities and increasing their 
access to necessary and vital health care services.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I rise this morning alongside my 
colleagues Senators Hutchison and Mikulski to voice my support for the 
Afghan Women and Children's Relief Act of 2001, which I am proud to 
cosponsor.
  This bill authorizes the President to provide educational and health 
care assistance to the women and children living in Afghanistan and as 
refugees in neighboring countries. This is an important new front in 
our war against terrorism--and for the people of Afghanistan--and a 
much overdue one at that.
  For over twenty years Afghanistan has known little but violence, 
bloodshed, and civil war. It has seen mass killings, disappearances, 
land mines, child soldiers, and one of the world's largest refugee 
outflows and internally displaced populations in history.
  And, since the Taliban takeover in 1996, Afghanistan has also been 
witness to a horrifying war against women.
  Until the accession of the Taliban women in Afghanistan were involved 
in public life, had access to education, were able to travel freely 
within their own country, and had access to jobs. Indeed, many were 
professionals--doctors, nurses, and teachers.
  But under the Taliban women have been systematically denied access to 
education and health care. They have been denied access to employment. 
They have been forced to wear burkas, an all-encompassing garment, if 
they go out in public--something they can only do if accompanied by a 
male relative. Indeed, without a male relative to accompany them, many 
are even denied access to humanitarian aid and food assistance.
  In short, under the Taliban Afghan women have been systematically 
denied their basic and fundamental human rights.
  At the same time Afghanistan has witnessed a burgeoning humanitarian 
crisis. Two decades of war have destroyed or degraded much of the 
housing stock in Afghanistan's major cities. Afghan war-widows have 
been forced to become the primary bread-winners for their families and 
children, but, under Taliban law, are often prevented from working. As 
a result, tens of thousands of Afghan children are undernourished or 
malnourished. Most Afghans do not have access to safe drinking water. 
It has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Millions 
of Afghans have fled to neighboring countries, and millions more are 
internally displaced within their own country.
  I first became concerned about the plight of Afghan women five years 
ago, during the 105th Congress, when, shortly after the Taliban 
takeover of Kabul, I first started to hear the horror stories of what 
was transpiring in a country which at that time rarely made the news 
section of American newspapers.

  As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee I held a public 
hearing on women's rights in Afghanistan to learn more about what was 
happening, and I introduced legislation which condemned the Taliban, 
called on the United States to provide additional humanitarian 
assistance to the people of Afghanistan, and stated that the U.S. 
government should not recognize any government of Afghanistan which 
systematically maltreated women.
  Alongside a handful of my colleagues--Senators Boxer and Brownback 
foremost among them--I have continued to try to bring attention to this 
issue in the years since, addressing it in letters to the President, 
addressing it every year in statements on International Woman's Day, 
cosponsoring further legislation in the Senate, and, earlier this year, 
urging the Administration to consider additional emergency assistance 
for the people of Afghanistan, with an emphasis on the special needs of 
women and children.
  For too many years, however, all too few people listened.
  But I would argue that how a regime treats its women and children can 
be seen as an early warning indicator that can alert us to larger 
systemic problems that demand our attention.
  Indeed, as I stated before the Foreign Relations Committee in 
addressing this issue in 1998, ``The conditions of near-anarchy that 
have resulted from the sectional fighting and civil war have created in 
Afghanistan an environment well-suited for the training of terrorists 
and the production and shipment of drugs. It is no coincidence that 
Osama bin Laden has chosen Afghanistan as a base of operations . . . 
.''
  Today, tragically, we have all become experts on Afghanistan and its 
tumultuous recent history.
  The ``Afghan Women and Children's Relief Act of 2001'' is an 
important statement of the United States commitment to the future of 
Afghanistan and its people. A commitment to make sure that 
Afghanistan's women and children, who have borne the brunt of the 
Taliban's brutality for the past half-decade, will receive the 
assistance they need, and have the opportunity for a future.
  As we continue to push forward in our effort to combat international 
terrorism I can think of few tasks more valuable than making sure that 
Afghanistan will never again face conditions which have made it an 
ideal base for terrorist operations, and that the people of Afghanistan 
will never again face the human suffering that they have been subject 
to for the past two decades.
  I urge my colleague to join with Senators Hutchison and Mikulski in 
support of this important piece of legislation.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise today in support of this very 
important piece of legislation. I would like to commend my colleagues, 
Senators Hutchison, Mikulski, and Boxer, for their leadership not only 
on this bill, but also in these issues generally. Women and children 
make up 80 percent of refugees worldwide. In Afghanistan, twenty years 
of civil war, political turmoil, continuing human rights violations and 
recent drought have already displaced more than five million of the 
Afghani population. Some four million refugees are displaced in 
neighboring countries and across the world, while another one million 
people are internally displaced within Afghanistan. Before September 
11, severe drought had brought the country to the verge of famine and 
existing Taliban

[[Page S11109]]

restrictions on relief agencies had severely hampered the delivery of 
assistance and civilian access to basic services. Approximately 1 
million people, the majority of them women and children, will die of 
starvation if aid is not given to them before the winter arrives.
  In addition to being denied physical needs, the women and children of 
Afghanistan have long been denied the freedom and respect that are also 
necessary to sustain human life. The oppressive rule of the Taliban 
removes from their lives the very freedoms we embrace, education, free 
speech, and the opportunity to make a living. The Taliban restrictions 
are so severe that they make it nearly impossible for women to exercise 
these and other basic human rights. Under this rule, the very lives of 
women are in danger. There are hundreds of stories of women being 
executed, raped, or beaten. Just recently, RAWA reported that at least 
four women in the last six months were burned alive by their husbands 
for their alleged infringements of Taliban law. They received no trial 
for these offenses and their husbands were praised, not punished for 
these horrible acts.
  The women members of the Senate and many of our colleagues have 
called on the U.S. to act to bring an end to these violations of basic 
human rights. Over the past several years, Senator Boxer, myself and 
others have called on the Foreign Relations Committee to take immediate 
action to ratify the Convention to End Discrimination Against Women, a 
treaty designed to stamp out this type of behavior worldwide. Over the 
last two months, Americans have been reminded of the importance of 
their freedoms. Many are prepared to die to protect them for all 
Americans. Yet if we are to be the true and lasting democracy that we 
hope to be, democracy and freedom cannot end at our borders. We must 
work to ensure that men, women and children everywhere know what it is 
like to be truly free.
  This bill recognizes that the war to preserve freedom must be fought 
on two fronts. First, through military action designed to bring an end 
to oppressive rule. Secondly, through targeted humanitarian aid 
designed to provide education, health care, food and support to the 
citizens so that they may one day form the base of a new and free 
society. In providing this type of support to the women and children of 
Afghanistan, the United States is protecting the principles upon which 
this country was founded, that each and every individual in this world 
is ``endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that 
among these are, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  Again, I am proud to join Senators Hutchison and Mikulski in support 
of this important legislation and I urge that we pass it into law as 
soon as possible.

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