EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The establishment of an Interim Administration for Afghanistan
during the Bonn talks in December 2001 was heralded as offering Afghan women a chance
to claim their place in public life and participate in the country's development after systemic
exclusion under the Taliban. Creation of a Ministry of Women's Affairs, the
commitment of substantial donor assistance to programs targeting women, and,
most critically, the return of women to universities, schools, and government
offices all portended a new day.
Lost in the initial euphoria, however, was attention to the
critical factors that had made past reform on women's rights unsustainable and
to the task of identifying strategies for mainstreaming gender issues in the
development process as a whole. Without a coherent policy regarding gender and
development on the part of both the international community and the Karzai
government, donor assistance is being channelled to projects likely to prove at
most symbolic.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs is the logical vehicle for
developing strategies to embed gender in the planning activities of the line
ministries. It has, however, been hobbled by lack of professional capacity and
a hierarchical structure that impedes collaboration between its departments. This
stems in part from its absorption of a communist-era women's association, whose
vocational training mission is ill suited to current challenges. In the words
of a gender specialist in Kabul,
the ministry is "functioning as a relatively large NGO". The steps needed to
make it more effective include re-staffing to develop research, program
development, and budgeting capabilities; creation of links between its departments;
and establishment of health, education, and gender advocacy and training departments.
The mechanisms established to improve coordination between
ministries and between the government and donors have significant structural
defects. Although the government has requested all ministries to name gender
focal points, most have appointed lower-level officials who have little
authority to shape planning and policies.
To improve budgetary policy formation through early public
and international input, the administration has also developed an internal
structure of policy coordination bodies, called "consultative groups", as well
as a Gender Advisory Group that includes donor participation. Twelve budgetary
program areas have been divided between seventeen consultative groups, or
working groups of ministries, donors, and NGOs headed by a lead ministry. To
date, these have failed to incorporate gender effectively into the national
budget or the policy calculations of the line ministries.
Donor assistance, both to government and civil society, has
been directed toward quick-impact, high visibility projects. Relatively little
research has been done into their sustainability and their accessibility to
women, particularly in rural areas. The Ministry of Women, assisted by the
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and funded by a U.S.$2.5
million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), plans
to establish community development centres in fourteen provincial capitals,
with a goal of expanding them to cover all 32 provinces.
Gender and development specialists in Kabul
are sharply divided on the utility of these centres. Some argue that the
international community should have first directed resources to studying local
modes of organising and conducting broader consultations with women in the
provinces. Other donor-supported activities, including sewing centres and women’s
shelters, have similarly been established without detailed research.
The barring of women by the Taliban from most employment and
secondary school education paradoxically galvanised Afghan women activists. The
underground schools and literacy programs they established have given rise to
many of the NGOs now active in Kabul.
Many, however, are dependent on donor support, channelled through large
international NGOs. The small grants that they receive restrict their capacity
for growth and limit their activities to vocational training, literacy
programs, and other activities that have marginal impact on women’s economic
empowerment.
Woman activists, particularly those who attempt to educate
and mobilise women around issues related to political participation, also
operate in a difficult environment. Some interviewed by ICG recounted threats
they have received. A renewed and expanded international commitment to security
is urgently needed if the limited gains women have made in Kabul
are to be institutionalised and emulated in other Afghan cities.
Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on 5 March 2003, as Afghanistan
is in the midst of ambitious constitution-drafting and judicial and legislative
reform, creates an historic opportunity and obligation to incorporate the
treaty protections into national laws and institutions. The constitutional
process is also an opportunity to incorporate women into political processes
through broad-based consultations.
If gender equality is to obtain significant public support,
arguments and idioms are required that draw upon Islamic notions of equity and
social justice. Progressive legal and constitutional developments in other
Islamic countries, such as Iran's
family courts, should be examined as possible models for Afghanistan.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To Afghanistan's Transitional Administration:
1. Request the Ministry of Women's Affairs to study options
for, and adopt, an administrative structure that streamlines its functioning
and establishes crosscutting links within its departments.
2. Ensure that all ministries name as gender focal points
officials with at least the rank of deputy minister or department head and link
those gender focal points to the Gender Advisory Group, so that policy
recommendations can be disseminated within the government.
3. Appoint permanent managerial and technical support staff to
the Gender Advisory Group and other bodies that are meant to mainstream gender
policy in line ministries.
4. Appoint the members of the civil service commission, give it
a professional secretariat and use employment selection criteria it develops as
a basis for appointment to government posts and review of existing
appointments, including within the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
5. Develop methods of ensuring that gender policy concerns are
incorporated within budgetary allocations of line ministries.
6. Establish family courts in each provincial centre, with
jurisdiction over all matters related to divorce, compulsory marriage, child
custody and inheritance, and ensure that judges presiding over the courts are
fully conversant with the civil code and applicable international treaties to
which Afghanistan is a party.
7. Incorporate women with experience in public life and
advocacy into the Constitutional Commission to ensure visible and meaningful
gender balance.
8. Ensure that input from the public consultation process,
particularly with women, is reflected in the final draft of the constitution
presented to the Constitutional Loya Jirga.
9. Ensure that the selection process facilitates women's
participation in the Constitutional Loya Jirga.
To the Judicial Reform Commission:
10. Incorporate the Convention on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) into the revised civil and criminal codes,
in particular with respect to family law.
11. Identify appropriate progressive Islamic statutory systems,
including those of Tunisia and Malaysia, that could be sources for revision of the
civil and penal codes consistent with Afghan norms.
To the international community:
12. Include capacity building in programming and budgeting in
the aid given to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
13. Support creation of micro-credit loan programs and training
in loan management for women.
14. Ensure that gender and development assistance is based on
field research and consultations with Afghan women, including market research
into income-earning opportunities, women's mobility in the target areas, and
accessibility of services.
15. Help the Ministry of Education develop curricula that
explain women’s rights under the civil code and CEDAW in terms accessible to
both male and female students.
16. Support financially a consultation process on the
constitution that gives women a genuine voice and identify and support
initiatives to develop a constituency for women's rights within and outside the
government in the run-up to the Constitutional Loya Jirga.
To the United Nations:
17. Refocus UNIFEM's efforts on effective needs assessments,
appropriate income generation projects with the necessary auxiliary training,
and projects that build women’s capacity to participate in the political process.
To the states participating in ISAF:
18. Extend ISAF or an equivalent mission to additional areas of
the country, beyond Kabul, especially major urban centres, so that Afghan women activists
can operate there effectively.
Kabul/Brussels, 14 March 2003
