More women need to register for Afghan elections: UN

More than 1.7 million Afghans have registered to vote in landmark democratic elections scheduled for September, but the number of women participating needs to increase, said a UN spokesman.

More than 1.7 million Afghans have registered to vote in landmark democratic elections scheduled for September, but the number of women participating needs to increase, a UN spokesman said Thursday.

So far 1,733,885 people have registered to vote in Afghanistan's first post-Taliban polls and of these 404,287, or 29 percent, are women, UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.

Quoting electoral observers, he said that while the proportion of women registering in the past week had crept as high as 38 percent, overall the figure remained too low.

"The experts are also of the view that the proportion of the women registrants can and should increase further," he said.

Women were effectively barred from public life and education under the harsh Taliban regime.

Registration has been going on in eight major cities around the country since December last year but from May 1 the process will move into all provinces in a massive logistics exercise which hopes to register an estimated 10.5 million eligible Afghans.

De Almeida e Silva said that as registration had reached its peak in the eight cities, the number of registration sites in these areas would be significantly reduced. However, sites to register women would remain open, he said.

Meanwhile members of the pro-monarchy Movement of Afghan National Unity Thursday held a demonstration in Kabul calling for more registration facilities, among other demands.