WITH the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan there are a number of concerns in relation to the rights and roles of women. Will they still have access to a full education, freedom of movement, the right to work and the right to speak out?
What can be done to convince them to allow women full and equal rights?
Medical and food supplies should not be restricted nor should any humanitarian support.
One area that could be restricted is access to international sports competition especially as women might not be able to play any sports.
Perhaps this will be an unnecessary step, but history suggests that within a short time, once the evacuation and exit have been forgotten so will women’s rights.
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Governments are not always sane
In this time of great upset there is still one reliable source of humour, government bureaucrats.
Australia has a Permanent Residency visa process including a family stream that allocates 5,000 places for parents. In years when there are more than 5,000 applicants they go on a waiting list for their application to be assessed.
A 93-year-old father, Zack Krouse, who applied in 2014 has just been told that his application will be processed in 2064 as the waiting list is quite long. He would be 133 years old by then so it is unlikely that he will be able to contribute to Australia’s economy and thus his application may be knocked back.
There should be a more rational way of running the world than letting people follow rules without thinking about them.
We need a more rational world so that we can beat COVID, then work on climate control and maybe try to stop all of the arguments between countries that lead to so many deaths and refugees.
Maybe if we made all of our bureaucrats work from home without access to Zoom or the internet the world would be better or at least saner.
These are not laughing matters. (dfitzger@melbpc.org.au)/PN
