Concept Paper: Family Guidance Center
Afghanistan Women For Afghan Women
December 2007
1. Summary
2. Problem
3. Goals/Objectives
4. Approach/Implementation
5. Time Frame
6. Relationships with other organizations and potential partners
7. Monitoring and Evaluation
Attachment 1. WAW Background
Attachment 2. Summary of Training Program, Dr. Anne Brodsky
Attachment 3. Recent relevant articles
Attachment 4. Violations of women's human rights in Afghanistan
Attachment 5. Abbreviations
1. Summary (back to top)
As the first stage in a broad plan to provide relief for the untold numbers of women in Afghanistan who are victims of domestic violence, forced and underage marriages, rape, and other violations of their human rights, Afghanistan Women for Afghan Women (WAW) has embarked on a new project: the creation of a Family Guidance Center (FGC) in Kabul. Currently in Kabul alone many hundreds of women a year besiege government agencies such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA), hospitals, NGOs, and local police stations seeking refuge from domestic persecution only to be turned away, defeated and discouraged, because no meaningful services are available. In the future, these cases will be referred to the WAW center. If WAW’s professional staff determines that a family constellation is receptive to treatment, the center will provide mediation and ongoing psychological counseling for the woman and affected family members (for a minimum of one year). When a woman cannot safely return home, the center will provide shelter and assistance in finding safe housing as well as legal counseling and referral to attorneys trained to represent women in courts of law. The center will also offer programs designed to give women skills to address their immediate situations, to challenge and refuse further victimization at the hands of their families. One example is the study of the status of women in Qu’ranic texts and under current Afghan law. A fundamental premise of the program is that women do not have to jettison their culture or their religious beliefs in order to take charge of their lives. Once the Family Guidance Center is fully established, WAW will expand into other provinces. Working with local leaders to assess needs, we will develop referral centers, safe houses, transitional houses for women being released from detention centers, and/or family guidance centers. Throughout, we will work cooperatively with governmental agencies and other NGOs whose vision coincides with ours: a vision of an Afghanistan genuinely engaged in using all available resources to ensure women’s human rights, honoring in concrete practice its commitment to this cause as signatory to CEDAW and UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
WAW is a non-profit organization based in New York City and Kabul with extensive as advocates for women’s human rights, providers of humanitarian relief for women and children, educators of women and girls who have been denied the right to attend school, and creators of income-generating projects for widows.
2. Problem (back to top)
During the past year, a rash of reports on the situation of women in Afghanistan has been issued by Afghan governmental agencies and by foreign and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that claim a particular interest in women’s rights or in Afghanistan or both (see Attachment 2). More reports are in the offing. What has sparked them is the dire situation of women in the country, the systematic violations of their human rights, and the failure of concerned parties to achieve significant improvements by providing women with legal protections rooted in a capable, honest, and stable judiciary system, education and employment opportunities, safety from violence, much of it savage, and protection from hidebound customs originating in the conviction that women are the property of men. There is a critical shortage of shelters where women can find refuge from abuse—violent and otherwise (there are 6 safe houses for women at risk in the entire country). In a country where the foundations of civil law are in ruins, perpetrators of abuse are rarely punished; more often, women are revictimized for the abuses they have suffered at the hands of men.
The director of the legal department of MoWA estimates that from 20-200 women per month appear at that agency’s doors seeking help—seeking deliverance—from unbearable family situations only to be turned away because MoWA has neither the capacity (trained staff) nor the mandate to engage in family counseling. In meetings with WAW director Manizha Naderi in the Fall, 2006, knowledgeable representatives from MoWA IDLO, UNHCR, AIHRC, the British Embassy, USAID, the European Commission, OXFAM, GTZ, MM, the Italian Embassy, and others decried the lack not only of shelters but of trained counselors, psychologists, and social workers, professionals who are competent to treat the vast numbers of depressed and traumatized women, children (and men). In fact, they are practically non-existent.
In its paper on Women in Development, USAID astutely notes that in addition to impeding “women’s ability to live full and productive lives,” violence against women “restricts their contributions to family, society and economic development, often leading to … the disintegration of families… and ultimately mental, medical and economic consequences of untold proportions.” The reports we mention in paragraph 1 above cite as evidence for their discouraging conclusions the rise in the national rate of self-immolations by women for whom burning themselves alive is the only way they can exercise self-determination (150 cases in western Afghanistan, 34 in the south, 197 in Herat, all in the last year, with rates known to be underreported). Through some still untheorized disconnection in thought and a startling absence of self-analysis, a nation/culture that places supreme value on the family places the least value on women and girls—wives and daughters.
The following quotations substantiate our claims:
Violence against women and girls in Afghanistan is pervasive; few women are exempt from the reality or threat of violence. Afghan women and girls live with the risk of: abduction and rape by armed individuals; forced marriage; being traded for settling disputes and debts; and face daily discrimination from all segments of society as well as by state officials. Strict societal codes, invoked in the name of tradition and religion, are used as justification for denying women the ability to enjoy their fundamental rights, and have led to the imprisonment of some women, and even to killings. Should they protest by running away, the authorities may imprison them (Amnesty International, “Afghanistan: Women Still Under Attack—a Systematic Failure to Protect,” May 2005, p.1).
[In Afghanistan] some forms of violence against women have been on the rise, while security for women living in many provinces is worse now than it was in 2001. The last two years [2005 and 2006] have witnessed the murders of women aid workers, attacks on women elections workers, the continuation of severe forms of domestic abuse, trafficking and prostitution of women, an astronomical rise in cases of self- immolation, high rates of child marriage, the kidnapping of young women, and minimal protection from rape and assault…The true scale of violence against women has not been reported in the Western media…
Five years down the road, the rhetoric of gender equality and the apparent interest in women’s issues in Afghanistan among the international community and with donors is not reflected in the realities of ordinary women. Programming has been marred by short-term perspectives, inappropriate projects for the Afghan context, and ‘workshop fever’ oriented at Afghan women leaders. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs operates at low capacity and with minimal influence on government policy. Most critically, the practical needs of women and girls remain unmet as basic services—such as access to clean water, education, healthcare, and livelihoods—remain at bay…There are few places in Afghanistan where women enjoy the protection of the law (WOMANKIND,Taking Stock, p. 6).
Because gender inequity poisons every facet of Afghan society, these reports should be grim news not only for feminists and human rights advocates but also for those who have a stake in strengthening the fragile democracy in the country. Skeptics on that score point to obstacles like the failure to develop a strong army or capable police force, the resurgence of the Taliban, the growth of the opium industry, and the power of warlords. But finding solutions to these problems may be less complicated than overcoming gender inequity—in our opinion the most formidable obstacle of all. To say that democracy can exist in Afghanistan, where the markers of gender equity are among the lowest in the world, is to say that democracy can exist in a country where more than half of the population lacks the protection of law and basic freedoms. Democracy and gender inequity as it exists in Afghanistan are incompatible social conditions.
In making this point, we are not wandering from the topic at hand: the problem. In the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and at flashpoints throughout the world, the repercussions of gender inequity reach far beyond the physical and mental suffering of women and girls, although their misery is grave enough in itself to require massive interventions. Recent social indicators released by the UN and other organizations demonstrate the direct link between the suppression of women and a country’s economic stagnation, vulnerability to extremism, and failure to develop democratic institutions.
The intimate relationship between gender inequity and tyranny should not come as a surprise. The practice of excluding the topic of women’s rights from the weighty deliberations taking place in the halls of power around the globe—as something that can be attended to when the real problems of the world are solved—demands a willful denial of the lethal damage it wreaks on the social fabric. The subjugation of millions of women to an omnipotent patriarchy and the widespread tolerance of abuse of women at the highest levels of the government play directly into the hands of despotic forces and explain why gender inequity is the linchpin of Taliban strategy. Gender inequity cannot be explained as the product of religious fundamentalism as it is played up to be by governments and the media. It is an indispensable prop of tyranny. Tyranny finds a congenial home wherever 50% of a population is already on its knees.
3. Goals/Objectives of WAW's Family Guidance Center, Kabul (back to top)
Goals
To fill the immense void in concrete services both for women seeking relief from domestic violence and other violations of their human rights and for families in crisis
Objectives
• To provide women in Afghanistan with safety from chronic domestic violence.
• To develop a national cadre of counselors, starting with 3 in Kabul, trained to diagnose and treat problems in families.
• To provide women seeking legal solutions to their problems with expert advice and competent legal representation.
• To partner with organizations working to restore the rule of law in Afghanistan and strengthen civil laws that protect women and children.
• To treat children who have been victims of or witnesses to violence.
• To develop a core of legal experts and progressive Islamist scholars, male and female, willing to conduct classes in the FGC and elsewhere on women’s legal affairs, family relationships, women’s rights, and related topics.
• To start a data bank that will in time provide the hard statistics needed for reliable analyses of DV and other violations of women’s rights.
• To influence cultural attitudes toward women’s rights.
4. Approach/Implementation (back to top)
Approach
WAW’s FGC aims to provide relief to victims of DV and other forms of gender violence through a holistic approach based on the assumption (shared by NGOs and governmental agents throughout the country) that these violations of women’s rights, although endemic, are not immutable conditions of the culture but often the result of external factors that overwhelm and devastate family members: grinding poverty, unemployment, subhuman living conditions, decades of war and violence, severe trauma, continued insecurity, and frustrated hope. And they are frequently the consequence of pervasive ignorance and illiteracy that make Afghan men and women alike prey to false renderings of Islamic law by opportunists vying for power at every level of society. Or they may be caused by a deep and severe pathology beyond the reach of counselors and social workers. This range means that as a first step WAW staff must judge each case, each violation—rape, forced or underage marriage, DV or other types—in its own unique context to determine the potential for amelioration and then the treatment. Women living in families that are deemed untreatable or in situations that defy remediation will be referred to existing safe houses and/or legal experts.
The Family Guidance Center (FGC) is original and unique in Afghanistan. But it is not a case of a Western organization imposing Western values or methods on a disparate culture. The services we will provide have been offered on a limited basis but with considerable success elsewhere in the country, in the few existing safe houses and in a now closed center in Herat. In addition, one could say that the advice or instructions traditionally offered to families by village Shuras and Imams is a type of family counseling—albeit decidedly biased against women.
Implementation:
• A rigorous intake process that includes all family members to determine the most suitable approach to the case.
• Ongoing counseling with family, including husband, mother-in-law, and children in a empathetic, non-judgmental environment, welcoming to all family members, offering confidentiality, professionalism, and culturally sensitive services drawn whenever possible from proven services offered in other Muslim countries.
• Individual treatment for husband (or other male family members) based on the premise that domestic violence is caused not by problems in a relationship but by the individual who is doing the violence and by the imbalance of power between the victim and the perpetrator.
• Legal advice from an expert on women in civil/Islamic law and referrals to lawyers who will represent women in court.
• Follow-up visits to family to prevent relapses.
• Temporary accommodations for woman until her return home is deemed safe from violence or until space can be found for her in a safe house.
• To support actual treatment, formal classes and informal discussion groups designed to empower women and men to make changes in their behavior within and outside the family structure. Additional classes conducted by progressive Mullahs on such topics as women’s rights, peaceful, nonviolent family life as defined by Islamic law, transgressions of Islamic and civil law such as forced and underage marriage.
• Classes for husbands and wives on child rearing, family planning, hygiene, mental illness such as depression, anger, post-traumatic syndrome.
• Referrals to literacy and vocational training classes. Search for employment opportunities for men and women.
•Ongoing staff training.
WAW’s FGC differs from existing programs (safe houses, FRUs) in that:
• To reaching women who need help but do not know where to turn and to counteract the widespread distrust of secret shelters, we will advertise the location of our FGC on radio and TV.
• While women are the primary victims of gender inequity, male perpetrators suffer as well—not equally but in serious ways not always acknowledged by human rights advocates. Thus, WAW will offer treatment to the entire family rather than woman alone. Problems of men will be taken seriously and addressed.
Staff:
WAW Director, Manizha Naderi, who was born in Afghanistan and raised in the US, repatriated to Afghanistan to start the FGC. In NYC, she built WAW’s Community Outreach Project (COP) from the ground up. In addition to creating a funding base that has sustained the COP for over 5 years, she developed the programs that continue to serve a community of 25,000 Afghans. These programs focus on women and children but also serve the men who are their husbands and the fathers. She was a NY manager of the BPeace project funded by the US State Department. In Afghanistan, she has developed a network of men and women in government agencies and NGOs who are helping to formulate plans for the FGC and who have offered support to this project in the way of advice, staff training, and—when possible—funding.
FGC staff include:
Administrator/financial officer, 3 social workers, 1 legal expert, 3 drivers, 3 guards, 1 cook, 1 cleaner. Plans for training staff include using services of Medica Mondiale, Dr. Anne Brodsky of Univ. Maryland (see Attachment 2) and other mental health trainers. Legal training will be provided by International Development Law Office (IDLO). Staff will expand as clientele increases and resources permit. To ensure that staff operates as a team, all staff members will be required to participate in training whatever their assignments.
5. Time Frame (back to top)
• Hiring process to get underway in early Jan. by Manizha Naderi (WAW director), a professional social worker, and a MoWA senior advisor.
• First phase of staff training by social workers/counselors in Afghanistan to start in Feb.
• Detailed intake forms and the intake process itself to be developed in training sessions by staff and trainers and rehearsed by entire staff through role-playing.
• Staff ready to see clients by March 2007.
• Arrival of Prof. Anne Brodsky (Ph.D. in psychology, Chair, Women’s Studies Program, Univ. Md.) and two or three graduate students in early June for further intensive staff training (see Attachment 2).
• By late summer, formation of national association of representatives from cognate organizations and disciplines. Monthly meetings to discuss individual cases, successful interventions and failures, public education on women’s human rights, and human rights advocacy.
• Once the Kabul FGC is running smoothly, WAW will expand it—or appropriate modifications of this prototype—to other areas of Afghanistan
6. Relationships with other organizations and potential partners (back to top)
Over the past 5 years, local and foreign NGOs, government agencies, and individuals dedicated to improving the lot of women in Afghanistan have attempted many strategies, from providing direct services to women, to capacity building, to designing policies to be adopted and implemented by the government. Some change, albeit modest, is apparent, particularly in cities where women work in the government and in NGOs, in academia, where women are both students and faculty, and in the judiciary and health systems. But most analysts agree that these efforts have failed to yield the anticipated improvements—for reasons that are not mysterious: the sheer magnitude of the problem, the remoteness and inaccessibility of women in rural areas, the stranglehold of custom and tradition on the society, the inchoate state of the judiciary system and the corruption poisoning its foundations, and the failure of the government to offer more than lip service on behalf of the majority of its citizens.
The progress—or lack thereof—of women’s human rights throughout the world as well as in Afghanistan teaches us that the systematic discrimination against women that is Afghanistan’s singular mark of distinction cannot be alleviated by organizations or governmental agencies working alone, no matter how competent, powerful or well-intentioned. To make significant headway against gender discrimination, which Charlotte Bunch calls “the most pervasive human rights violation” in the world, individuals and organizations must work together, share information, combine strategies and resources. Only then will women in Afghanistan be able to leverage their potential power—now sadly dormant—to demand and win their social, economic, and cultural rights.
In developing the Family Guidance Center, WAW intends to interface with other agencies/organizations dedicated to improving the lot of women in Afghanistan. In so doing, we will integrate our needs-based approach with rights-based strategies designed to lead to broad social change. This plan will be especially evident in our commitment to provide women with the strongest available legal representation in courts of law with the assistance of organizations specializing in the reformation of the judiciary system—like IDLO.
• NGOs throughout the country that provide literacy and vocational training, micro-lending institutions that help women start small businesses, entrepreneurs willing to employ women.
• Shelters/safe houses: of inestimable value but egregiously lacking in numbers throughout the country, particularly in areas where most conservative populations live.
• Progressive Mullahs and other religious leaders sympathetic to our goals.
• Government agencies
• FRUs: Created to provide assistance to women victims of domestic violence, currently in 2 districts in Kabul and expanding to other areas. FRUs have been of some value, but their work is limited by several factors.
• Women don’t know where they are or even that they exist.
• Women fear the police because of repeated abuse and revictimization.
• Police lack training in gender issues, are generally on the side of the husband, and are notoriously corrupt and bribable (especially by the husband).
• Police have little if any communication with prosecutors, are not involved in prosecution or investigation of cases, have no ability to follow up on victim complaints. Female police exist mainly to serve male police and have no power.
Potential partners:
• AIHRC
• Rights and Democracy
• Existing safe houses in Afghanistan, especially those directed by Voice of Women Organization (VWO), Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA), and Afghan Women’s Skills Development Center (AWSDC)
• IDLO
• Italian Justice Office
• Ministry of Women’s Affairs
• Ministry of Interior
• UNIFEM
• Norwegian Refugee Council
• GTZ, Rachel Wareham
• Rule of Law Project, USAID, Belquis Ahmadi
• CARE, Sarah Buchanan
• American Friends Service Committee
• Business Council for Peace (already a WAW partner)
7. Monitoring and Evaluation (back to top)
WAW will ask MM, IDLO and MoWA to provide an independent plan for evaluating the FGC after it has been receiving clients for 6 months. The plan will set forth its goals and methods in a written document agreed to by participants. We expect the process to include direct observations of training sessions and treatment, statistical date, WAW expects this plan to include the following methods and information:
*Statistical material kept by the FGC not only for the purpose of monitoring but also because no hard statistics on domestic or other types of violence exist in Afghanistan.
• No. of cases/week, month, etc.
• Detailed data on family and each family member (background, basis of marriage originally, number of children. ages, income, work, education, health etc.)
• How long the abuse has been going on
• Help sought in the past, type, outcome
• Type of violence the woman/children were subjected to
• What do you believe the purpose of your treatment is?
*Assessment of treatment by clients through interviews (done anonymously), questionnaires (if client is literate). Possible areas to be covered and questions:
• What kind of support has benefited you the most?
• Has your life at home changed since your family began your treatment and if so, how.
• How do you feel about your sessions with the counselor and other staff?
• How do you feel about the extra programs at the FGC (classes, discussion groups)?
• What have you learned since coming to the FGC?
• What kind of information has been most useful to you?
• How would you improve the FGC?
* Self-evaluation by staff.
* Analysis of subsidiary services in place by the time of the evaluation (legal referrals, classes on family relationships, etc.)
* Further evaluation of impact of services through discussions with family and/or community members not directly involved.
Attachment 1. WAW background information (back to top)
Mission Statement
WAW is a non-profit, grassroots organization based in New York City and Kabul committed to ensuring the human rights of Afghan women.
WAW promotes the agency of local Afghan women through the creation of safe forums where Afghan women can network, develop programs to meet their specific needs, and participate in human rights advocacy in the international sphere.
WAW raises funds for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, particularly schools and health facilities for women and children. Recognizing that the ability to earn their living is fundamental to the empowerment of women, WAW supports the development of vocational training programs for women in Afghanistan who have been denied access to education and professional training.
The inclusion of women in all decision-making processes is a requirement of a democratic society. WAW advocates for the representation of women in all areas of life in Afghanistan: political, social, cultural and economic.
Experience
WAW’s FGC brings into play the organization’s deep knowledge of and direct experience with Afghan culture as well as our experience as human rights advocates both nationally and internationally and as providers of humanitarian relief and the particular social services we will offer in our FGC. Our accomplishments include:
Human Rights Advocacy:
• Two international conferences in NYC, 2001, 2002. Afghan and non-Afghan women activists, lawyers, journalists and Islamic scholars discussed the cultural, political, and economic conditions of women in Afghanistan.
• Publication of “Women for Afghan Women, Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future,” ed. Sunita Mehta (Palgrave, 2002. Still in print). This book, which evolved from papers at the 2001 conference, informed people throughout the English-speaking world about women in Afghanistan and the diaspora.
• Widespread humanitarian relief in the form of food, clothing, money for destitute widows and families (ongoing).
• Conference on “Women and the Constitution” in Kandahar, 2003, in preparation for the approaching national constitutional convention. Women from all over Afghanistan attended to voice their views about the role of women in the new government, civil society and the family. The result was The Afghan Women’s Bill of Rights, which was presented to President Karzai, published throughout Afghanistan and the world, and made a part of the permanent record of the United Nations.
Education and Training Programs for Women through WAW’s Afghan Women’s Fund (AWF)
The AWF was started in 2001 by WAW board member Fahima Vorgetts, who continues to raise funds in the USA, Indonesia, and Brazil for its projects. The AWF provides widespread humanitarian relief, including food, clothing and financial assistance to destitute families. Projects include an orphan sponsorship program, opening schools in the IDP refugee camps in Kandahar for 1500 students, construction of elementary and middle schools for 1500 girls in Saleh Abad and Neysan, in Herat province, and expansion of a maternity clinic in Mir Bacha Kot, Herat. The AWF has partnered with local leaders in several villages to build wells, sewage/drainage and irrigation systems. These projects improve community health, provide income to the villagers, and build local leadership capacity.
Community Outreach in Queens, NY
• WAW offers direct services to hundreds of low-income, undereducated immigrant families each year. We offer ESL classes, a Girls Leadership Training Program, legal referrals, immigration services, computer training classes, photography classes, a walk-in crisis center for women/children with health, housing, financial, educational and employment problems, a domestic violence referral service, direct assistance for children having problems in school, and client advocacy.
• Partner of Business Council for Peace, an organization of entrepreneurs in the US that trains women in Afghanistan in small business development. Under a US State Department Grant, BPeace, and WAW brought Afghan businesswomen to NYC for training in product development, quality control, and business management.
Attachement 2: Training Plan (back to top)
Training plan by Dr. Anne Brodsky, Director, Gender and Women Studies Program, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Professor, Psychology, Gender and Women’s Studies. Dr. Brodsky's teaching, research and practice focus on the resilience of women and the role of communities in resisting societal risks, including community violence, poverty, racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. Using qualitative, feminist methods, her work has explored resilient processes and the role of psychological sense of community for single mothers raising children in risky neighborhoods of Washington, DC, for low income women in a holistic job training and education program in Baltimore, MD, and non-parenting young women in communities with high rates of single and teen parenting. She is the author of 15 articles and chapters on these subjects.
Dr. Brodsky has also worked extensively in Afghanistan to raise awareness of the plight of Afghan women under fundamentalist oppression and to give voice to Afghan women's lives and concerns.
Prepared by Dr. Brodsky: Training for Family Guidance Center staff is crucial to the professional and successful operation of such a new psychosocial setting in Afghanistan. When introducing a new service it is crucial that the staff be able to impart positive and appropriate outcomes to clients so that positive feelings accrue quickly towards the service. As an unknown social service in Afghanistan it will be imperative that staff at all levels of the setting are well trained in providing safe, confidential, professional, courteous and competent service. In a country in which talking about one's problems is not widely accepted nor recognized as appropriate, and one in which trusting one's story and lives to others is also often not safe, it is crucial that staff be appropriately trained to do good, not harm. While psychology is beginning to grow as a discipline in Afghan universities, there still is very limited availability of appropriately trained intervention staff and even fewer persons appropriately trained with high degrees, which would normally be a requirement in Western countries for such jobs.
An important challenge to be broached immediately is the design of culturally appropriate interventions for families, men, women and children. As the psychosocial services arena in Afghanistan has been largely under-serviced and under-studied, it will be imperative to draw appropriate training and intervention materials for a post (and current) conflict Islamic society with Afghan cultural values and mores. Psychosocial service models from the surrounding region, other conflict sites, appropriate cross-culturally relevant Western models, Afghan-specific psychosocial studies, etc. should be drawn upon in the design of these trainings and the interventions that will be provided.
We proposed that this training and center development should take place through the design of training modules dealing with different aspects of Family Guidance and Center Operation (e.g ethics, confidentiality, record keeping, reflective listening skills, stages of change, child development, communication, behavioral modification techniques, couple's problem solving, goals setting, violence prevention, etc) to be provided to all staff as appropriate for their positions, education, and responsibilities. Trainings would be designed by a U.S. educated, clinical/community psychology university professor with 6 years of scholarship as well as direct experience in Afghanistan conducting psychology trainings in consultation with Afghan experts in culture, mental health, and family dynamics. Trainings will be conducted by same psychologist, along with American clinical Ph.D. students working in concert with Afghan psychology undergraduate students. Trainings will match American Ph.D. students with English speaking, Afghan university psychology undergraduate students to provide culturally, linguistic, and psychologically appropriate training to center staff. This partnership will provide field based educational opportunities and clinical experiences for both American and Afghan students, as well as necessary trainings to center staff.
Attachment 3: Recent articles/reports related to the situation of women in Afghanistan
(back to top)
“Achieving Women’s Economic and Social Rights: Strategies and Lessons from Experience,” The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID).
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission “Evaluation report on General Situation of Women in Afghanistan,” 2006.
“Afghanistan: Women Still Under Attack—a Systematic Failure to Protect.” Amnesty International, May 2005.
“Gender and Criminal Justice in Afghanistan,” Presented to UNAMA Human Rights Unit, 11/21/06, Kathryn Khamsi, Program Legal Council, International Development Law Organization (IDLO) (CIDA Project).
“In-depth study on all forms of violence against women,” Report of the Secretary-General of the UN, July 2006.
Medica Mondiale report on its study of self-immolation among women in Afghanistan. Released Dec. 2006.
Natasha Walters, “We are just watching things get worse.” The Guardian, Nov. 28, 2006.
Taking Stock: Afghan Women and Girls Five Years On. WOMANKIND Worldwide: Report: 2006: http://www.womankind.org.uk.
Technical Workshop: Gender and Criminal Justice in Afghanistan, Recommendation and Summary of Discussions, International Development Law Organization (IDLO).
Uncounted and Discounted: Report of UNIFEM on violence against women in Afghanistan, Aug. 2006.
Attachement 4: Some violations of women's rights in Afghanistan extrapolated from reports (back to top)
As this list will show, far from being an avenue of redress for women in Afghanistan, the judiciary process is a great obstacle to women seeking their rights.
• Widespread violence against women in Afghanistan, including rape, honor killings, domestic violence.
• Epidemic of school burnings, especially schools for girls In four southern provinces, UNICEF estimates that more than 380 of the 748 schools no longer provide an education to students, throwing more than 105,000 children, mostly girls, out of school.
• Lack of safe houses, medical care, psychological counseling, legal representation.
• No distinct offense of rape in Afghan law. Frequent prosecution of rape victims for crime of zina (sexual intercourse outside of marriage) (Gender and Criminal Justice, hereafter cited as G&CJ, pp.6-9).
• Bad: payment of a woman to another family in compensation for crime or other offense.
• Marriage of underage girl not a criminal offense (G&CJ, p. l0).
• Failure to prosecute perpetrators of violence against women, judiciary bias against women, “reticence among the police and prosecution meaningfully to address crimes against women” (G&CJ, p.14).
• Revictimization of women victims by criminal justice system. Example: running away from home treated as crime although not in penal code (G&CJ, p.15-19). Twenty women in prison in Kabul in 2005 accused or convicted of escaping from home. Eleven sentenced to 6 months to 14 years imprisonment (IDLO Gender Workshop Report, p. 14).
• Revictimization of rape victims (G&CJ, pp. 16-23).
• Failure to criminalize forced marriage and child marriage though both prohibited by the constitution. “…there has never been a prosecution under either Article 517(1) for forced marriage or Article 517(2) for forced marriage by way of compensation in “bad” (G&CJ, p.18).
• Little or no weight given to testimony of women victims of DV. The testimony of women victims (and often women’s family members) not considered as evidence. (G&CJ, p.19)
• Shari’a law requiring divorced women to give up children at age 9 (girls) or 7 (boys).
• Discrepancy between shari’a and common treatment of women victims in terms of wife’s disobedience of husband.
• Lack of legislation respecting rights of victims.
• Lack of standardized procedures in DV cases
• Steep evidentiary requirements imposed by courts in cases of violence against women.
• Prosecutors often not present at investigations although required to be there. Police never called by prosecutors to testify in court. (For in-depth discussion of flaws in Afghan criminal law practices that mitigate against women, some of which are listed below, see G&CJ report, pp. 24-31).
• Lack of communication between hospital treating women victims of DV and police or prosecutors. Lack of follow-up.
• Lack of police training as to how to handle domestic violence cases.
• Lack of investigative powers of police in FRUs, lack of clear mandate, protocols, and policies.
• Lack of communication between women’s shelters and police.
• Poor forensic analysis in domestic violence cases and lack of trained forensic staff. Cases involving violence against women receive no forensic evaluation.
• Little understanding of how expert medical testimony should be used in criminal prosecutions.
• Cases of violence against women are prosecuted and punished only in the most extreme circumstances.
Attachment 5: Abbreviations (back to top)
AIHRC Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission
AREU Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit
AWSDC Afghan Women’s Skills Development Center
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women
CIDA Canadian International Development Agency
DV domestic violence
FGC Family Guidance Center
FRU Family Response Unit
GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit
HAWCA Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan
IDLO International Development Law Organization
IJO Italian Justice Office
MM Medica Mondiale
MoWA Ministry of Women’s Affairs
NRC Norwegian Refugee Council
UNHCR United Nations High Commission on Refuges
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
WAW Women for Afghan Women
VWO Voice of Women Organization