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Dateline: August 16

Sophie McNeill travels to Afghanistan to examine how its women are being treated, just ahead of a Presidential election.

sophie_mcneill_video_journalistSBS’ Dateline has been intermittently on air lately due to the 2009 Ashes Series but this Sunday is back with three global stories.

Video Journalist Sophie McNeill (pictured) travels to Afghanistan to examine how its women are being treated, just ahead of a Presidential election this Thursday.

Eight years after George Bush declared them to be free from Taliban oppression, McNeill finds that women’s suffering and their cultural struggle for equal rights is far from over. Rates of forced and child marriage are still alarmingly high.

Adultery is a confused issue in Afghanistan because the act of a man raping young girls or adult women is also considered to be illegal adulterous behaviour committed by the females, in some circumstances.

McNeill gains rare access to a women’s detention centre and interviews a number women imprisoned for up to four years for adultery or for running away from husbands who abused them.

One young woman who’d been raped and then jailed for ‘adultery’ told McNeill “I’m left without hope. My life is ruined. I don’t know how to live.”

Mark Davis will also interview Abdullah Abdullah, the man who’s challenging Hamid Karzai in the upcoming elections.

Also on the show Video Journalist Ginny Stein looks at how the proceeds of diamond mining in Botswana are actually helping local people rather than propping up corrupt dictators and causing civil wars.

Stein’s story is about an inspiring initiative where vast diamond reserves, worth about three billion US dollars a year, are being used to spread wealth throughout the nation.

It airs 8:30pm Sunday on SBS.

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