By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- For the first time in 11 years International Women's Day was being celebrated openly in Afghanistan. Halfway around the world, the United Nations observance on March 8 focused on the new opportunities for the heroic Afghan women to enjoy their right to education, the workplace, health care and to a life free from violence, discrimination and abuse.

In a keynote address at the UN commemoration, U.S. First Lady Laura Bush said that "on International Women's Day, we affirm our mission to protect human rights for women in Afghanistan and around the world. And we affirm our support for all Afghans as they recover from war and injustice.

"Human dignity, private property, free speech, equal justice, education and health care -- these rights must be guaranteed throughout the world. Together, the United States, the United Nations and our allies will prove that the forces of terror can't stop the momentum of freedom," Mrs. Bush said.

The first lady said that the rebuilding of Afghanistan offers an unprecedented opportunity to help Afghan women return to the lives they once knew more than 20 years ago when they were important contributors to Afghan society as teachers, doctors and lawyers, and as wives, mothers and, in many cases, breadwinners of their families.

Mrs. Bush has spearheaded initiatives to gain support for restoring important freedoms to the women of Afghanistan. In November Mrs. Bush became the first U.S. first lady to deliver an entire weekly radio address to the nation and she used the opportunity to focus on the brutality against women and children by the then-ruling Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist network based in the country. She also invited several Afghan women to the White House to discuss the status of women in Afghanistan, thus helping to promote the inclusion of women in senior government posts in Afghanistan's interim government.

The United States is the largest and one of the longest continuous supporters of UN humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, and will continue to be, Mrs. Bush said at the United Nations.

As part of a $1.5 million pledge to help Afghan women work and support their families, the US is sending wheat to 21 bakeries run by widows who feed their own families and earn a living supplying bread to one-quarter of Kabul, she added. Another $50.2 million will support community-based health, education, shelter, water and sanitation projects.

Focusing on education, the first lady said that "education is the single most important long-term investment we can make in the future.

"Prosperity cannot follow peace without educating women and children. When people are educated, all the indexes of a society improve. For example: Improvements in women's education have contributed the most by far to the total decline in child malnutrition," she said.

Displaying the backpack filled with slate, chalk, school supplies and toys that are being given to 40,000 Afghan refugee children to use when they start back to school later this month, Mrs. Bush said that "when you given children books and an education, you give them the ability to imagine a future of opportunity, equality and justice."

The UN's International Women's Day program, entitled "Afghan Women Today: Realities and Opportunities," brought together UN officials, the current president of the Security Council Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, and women's rights activists including Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan and Sima Wali, president of the Washington-based NGO Refugee Women in Development and one of three Afghan women who participated in the Bonn peace talks.

Secretary General Kofi Annan said that "on this International Women's Day, let the women of Afghanistan be our reminder as well as our inspiration.... Our commitment to their cause should make us even more determined to address the challenges facing millions of women and girls worldwide."

Annan pointed out that the UN Charter proclaims equal rights for men and women. "Every woman on this planet wherever she may live, is entitled to exactly the same human rights as every man," he said.

"We have seen the cost to society when that basic principle is ignored...the plight of Afghan women, a plight that for several years had been an affront to all standards of dignity, equality and humanity," the secretary general said.

Praising their "remarkable courage and ingenuity," Annan said that "now Afghan women have won world support in reasserting their rights -- especially the right to play an active role at all levels of society, and the right to join in every stage of the work of bringing peace and development to their country."

But he stressed that Afghan women need more than expressions of solidarity in order to realize their potential. They will need more schools, equipment, teachers, and the opportunity to catch up on their education as well, Annan said.

"When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immediately: their children are better educated; they are healthier and better fed; they are better able to protect themselves against AIDS and other diseases; their families' income and economy improve. And what is true of families is true of communities -- ultimately, indeed, of whole countries," he said.

"Let us men remember that the achievement of women's rights is not the responsibility of women alone -- it is the responsibility of us all. Let us act on the conviction that the advancement of women does not benefit women alone -- it benefits us all," the secretary general said.