Kabul, Paris – 17 July 2019
17 July is the anniversary of the adoption of the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the international criminal court. In 2010, the Assembly of the State Parties decided to celebrate 17 July as the Day of International Criminal Justice. This was done as part of the efforts of campaigners for justice to recognise the emerging system of international justice, attracting attention to gross violations of human rights, including war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide, sex and gender-based violence against women, putting an end to impunity and establishing a just and enduring peace.
Armanshahr Foundation|OPEN ASIA was established as an independent organisation in Tajikistan and France 23 years ago. It began its work in Afghanistan in 2006. In the past 23 years, Armanshahr has adopted a holistic view and cultural approach and concentrated its work in the field of human rights on combating war and militarism, promoting justice, defending victims, combating systematic violence against women and achieving a just and enduring peace. It has pioneered the work in the field of transitional justice in Afghanistan and promoted the indivisibility of justice and the work to end impunity and peace-building. To that end, Armanshahr organised the first national conference with the title of “Citizens in search of truth and justice” in Kabul in December 2006. It subsequently took more serious steps in this direction by publishing a book called “Against Oblivion, Experience of Truth and Justice Commissions” and subsequently translating and publishing another book with the title of “A Practical Guide for Victims to the International Criminal Court.”
Armanshahr; the first Persian-language human rights publisher
As the first Persian-language human rights publisher in Afghanistan and the wider region, Armanshahr has published more than 60 titles (books, handbooks and research reports) on justice, peace and human rights, and women’s rights in 3 series: “Let’s break the silence”; “Women” and “Politis asia” in a total of more than 100,000 copies and distributed them for free, with the aim of combating oblivion and protecting collective memory. Examples of those titles include: “Afghanistan in search of truth and justice”, “Universal Jurisdiction: mechanisms to prosecute human rights violators”, “The Past Enlightens the Future (a collection of stories)”, “Justice for Women in War and Peace”, “A Handbook of Transitional Justice, A to Z”, “Human Rights at a Crossroads: The need for a rights-centred approach to peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan”, “EU guidelines-Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law”, “Sexual and gender-based violence in war”, “Accessing justice for victims of war in Afghanistan”. The last title consists of a package of 28 research and multimedia items (films and animations, books, research items and statements) for human rights activists and justice campaigners concerned with transitional justice, International Criminal Court, universal jurisdiction, and sexual and gender-based violence. In all those years, to monitor the situation of human rights and women’s rights in Afghanistan, the region and the world, Armanshahr has published 1,000 issues of specialised “human rights newsletters” as a tool of awareness raising and advocacy .
Armanshahr has also produced two documentaries: “Eyewitness”, based on stories of common people about war, violence and forced migration during four decades of war; “Afghanistan: unveiling a never-ending tale”, which narrates alternative views of a number of male and female elite members of society in relation to peace.
A decade of dialogue and mutual tolerance
More than a third of 180 dialogue conferences that Armanshahr has organised during the past one decade concerned justice and fundamental issues of human rights and peace. More than 500 human rights activists and defenders, women’s rights and civil society activists as well as a number of government officials addressed those conferences as speakers and more than 30,000 citizens took part in them, where they exchanged ideas in a democratic and citizen-centred environment. The most fundamental approach of Armanshahr in these programmes was reliance on the competence, knowledge, aptitude and responsibility of citizens in critiquing the status quo and aiming to change it. Examples from scores of such dialogue conferences include: “Transitional justice and functions of the civil society”, “Who celebrates peace? Thinking of peace, actots for peace in Afghanistan and the status of citizens”, “Women and justice in war and peace”, “Truth and justice in Afghanistan: national and international mechanisms”, “Custody policies and the respect for human rights: How to put an end to impunity; Challenges in implementing Transitional Justice.”, “What does transitional justice mean to people of Afghanistan? Going beyond intentions and creating peace at national level in practice”, “Sexual and gender-based violence”.
Ever since 2013, Armanshahr has been organising the “Human Rights Week” during the first 10 days of December. In all those six years, the major topics attended to during the week concerned transitional justice, victims, peace and women’s rights in the framework of conflict, before and after it, in workshops, seminars, cultural and artistic programmes and book publishing.
Simorgh Peace Prize at the Heart of Asia
Specific activities in the fields of justice and human rights have not prevented Armanshahr from paying attention to general and major national issues catering for all citizenry groups, i.e. artists, publishers, cultural activists, children and common people. Consequently, one of the pillars of Armanshahr’s activities has been focused on cultural and artistic productions (theatre, arts exhibitions, concerts, poetry nights, book reading groups, documentary films production, film screening etc) with human rights, justice and peace content. To that end, “Simorgh Peace Prize at the Heart of Asia” was established and several campaigns, including “Unveiling Afghanistan, the Voices of Progress”, were pursued in order to echo progressive, anti-war, justice and peace-seeking voices.
The Simorgh Peace Prize Festival has been organised five times up to now. In the 1st round, the prize was awarded to the anti-war, anti-militarism and anti-violence voices of poets and writers. In the 2nd round, the prize was awarded to independent publishers in Afghanistan, as well as the National Library of Tajikistan and Tajikistan’s Ministry of Culture for establishing a big and safe haven for books and publishing activities. In the 3rd round, the Festival applauded musicians who have consistently advocated peace and love. In the 4th round, women in all the three neighbouring countries at the heart of Asia – Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Iran – were praised as real guardians of peace; women who despise war-mongering and resist it by means of their persevering civic initiatives. In the 5th round in 2018, the Festival combined Simorgh peace prize with “Unveiling Afghanistan” campaign under the motto of “My dream city”. The Festival echoed the voices of school students in Afghanistan, from Herat to Kandahar, with a clear message in praise of peace and distaste for war, where children competed with their drawings, poems and stories.
Armanshahr Foundation launched the “Unveiling Afghanistan; the unheard voices of progress” campaign on the eve of the 3rd presidential election in the country in 2014, in which it benefited from cooperation with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). During this campaign, more than 120 writers, human rights activists, civil society activists, politicians, cultural activists and artists were interviewed about the state of human rights, their fears and hopes for Afghanistan. Those interviews were published in the high-circulation national daily newspaper 8-Sobh and Armanshahr’s website, and an English selection of them on FIDH’s website and the Huffington Post, through which the people, the government and the international community heard the voices of the male and female progressive elite of Afghanistan.
More than 1000 videos covering Armanshahr’s programmes and dialogue conferences have been uploaded on the organisation’s YouTube channel and are available to the public. Over 375,000 viewers have watched the various videos.
Women and children celebrate peace
The summit of Armanshahr’s activities consists of establishing a bond between the macro cultural, social, political issues of the society and its various strata of people on the one hand and the fundamental concepts of justice, peace, human rights, women’s and children’s rights on the other. Armanshahr has endeavoured to pay special attention to all social groups, in particular the vulnerable groups including women and children, in all its activities.
In the field of transitional justice and peace, Armanshahr has tried to attract the attention of the civil society activists, human rights defenders and peace-makers as well as government officials to the fate of children affected by war. It has organised various programmes such as a seminar “From illiteracy to war, from war to illiteracy: on the International Day of Literacy”, a panel discussion on “Obstacles facing the under-18 citizens in achieving justice”, a conference on “Children of war, refugees and returnees”, a panel discussion on “War-affected children”, and published books such as “Children and transitional justice: truth-telling, accountability and reconciliation” and “A child-sensitive approach to transitional justice”.
By concentrating on women’s rights from the angle of accessing justice in all its dimensions, in particular making the voices of women heard in the major scenes of decision-making and especially in the process of ending war and creating peace and initiating sensitivity towards the issue, Armanshahr has endeavoured to emphasise the pervasiveness of justice and peace. Consequently, Armanshahr has organised the International Women’s Film Festival-Herat, in cooperation with Roya Film House, since 2013 in order to create a platform for dialogue and education by means of the 7th Art. It has also recently launched the 40-Braids Women’s Film Caravan with the aim of bringing together artists in the field of film and cinema with women’s rights activists at the international level.
As a member of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Coalition for the ICC, Women’s Alliance for Security (WASL), and a founding member of the Transitional Justice Coordination Group in Afghanistan, Armanshahr Foundation|OPEN ASIA has extensively cooperated with like-minded organisations on the national and international levels and actively participated in numerous justice advocacy activities with the aim of making justice and a just peace accessible to victims of war and systematic violation of human rights.
In the past two decades, Armanshahr has endeavoured indefatigably on the path of achieving justice, ending impunity, combating war and militarism in every form and in any disguise.
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