Armanshahr Foundation|OPEN ASIA celebrated 7th annual Human Rights Week – Peace with warmongers; women of Afghanistan

In the past seven years, Armanshahr|OPEN ASIA has been celebrating the Human Rights Week during the first ten days of December to mark the International Human Rights Day, the 16 days of activism combating VAW, and promoting rights of victims. The creative space has aimed to promote a culture of human rights, exposing unheard voices, and building capacity among the young people and civil rights activists. As such, public opinion has been sensitized on women’s rights, transitional justice, victim’s rights and and peace. Diverse programmes during the week include educational workshops, public debates, cultural and artistic exhibitions, and publication and free distribution of Armanshahr’s books. In the current year, the Human Rights Week coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the 20thanniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security.

The 186th public debate of Armanshahr was organised in Kabul with the title of “Peace with warmongers; women of Afghanistan, 40 years after CEDAW and 20 years after Resolution 1325” as the first programme of the Human Rights Week, in which WHRDs, civil rights activists, peace and human rights defenders, representatives of civil society organisations, students and other young people participated. The government of Afghanistan is committed to both CEDAW and Resolution 1325 and is obliged to put them in force.

Under CEDAW, “discrimination against women” means exercising any distinction, exception or restriction based on gender, which would leave a destructive impact on human rights of women, their basic rights in all political, economic, social, cultural and civil areas. Article 7 of the Convention requires the state parties to take all necessary actions to eliminate discrimination against women and specifically ensure that women can participate in deciding and exercising government policies on equal footing with men.

On the other hand, Resolution 1325 emphasises the importance of women’s equal participation in all peace processes and the need to give them increased role in decision-making, especially in preventing and settling disputes, promoting sustainable peace, reconciliation and security, considering that women and children constitute the majority of the people who are increasingly targeted by armed groups and the military.

At the opening of the Human Rights Week, Rooholamin Amini, deputy director of Armanshahr Foundation, said: there has been talk of peace negotiations in this country for a while. The warmongers sit at one side of the table, the government of Afghanistan at another side of the table and the big international powers at the third side of a triangular table. There is no side for the people, i.e. the principal victims of these wars and violence. So long as we do not create another side for the table, this injustice would bring us a situation worse than before. If we are victims of war, we must also be architects of peace. We must know if the hand that is to be shaken today or tomorrow would pull the trigger again. We must know if the arm on which we lay our hand will once again move to flog us. If we do not know the answers to these questions and we are just happy with a ceasefire, then we do not know our dignity yet and we shall be justifying our killers.

The moderator and first speaker of the debate was Ms. Zarqa Yaftali, director of the Women Children Legal research Foundation, who said: 40 years after CEDAW and 20 years after Resolution 1325, women in Afghanistan are not in good conditions. The number of girls who are forced to drop out of school increases every year. There are reports that around 3 million children do not have access to education, 67 percent of whom are girls. Women among the internally displaced people do not have access to basic health and education. Although the government was supposed to make budget allocations for implementation of Resolution 1325, absence of political willpower has prevented any allocation in the national budget.

The second speaker, Mr Mousa Mahmoudi, Human rights expert, said: one of the tasks of the Commission is to emphasise and pursue accountability from the conflicting parties and endeavour to achieve the rights of victims and people of Afghanistan. The people demand investigation of crimes that have been compiled by the AIHRC in the “Voice of Justice”. Other achievements of the Commission are the “Action Plan for justice, peace and national reconciliation” and publication of the report on conflict settlement during the new period of democracy.

The speaker went on: how far has transitional justice been pursued since 2001? In the past few days, human rights activists brought up the situation of Afghanistan in the International Criminal Court. In a peace process, nobody can say that they will grant amnesty for crimes against humanity. The foundation of justice is accountability, but we have not been able to find a way forward. There is no accountability.

Ms Manija Ramazi, Professor of Kabul University, discussed the national and international commitments of the government and the peace talks. She said: we are celebrating the International Human Rights Day while the rights of citizens are violated. Rights of women and children are violated even more. Women’s rights and human rights activists are not safe. Women suffer harms from different angles in war. Therefore, the government should not ignore women’s role in its national and international commitments regarding social and political peace process. Women’s role has been quite meaningful and fundamental as the report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicates. However, if we were to compare this report with studies undertaken by other bodies, we would know that many provisions of Resolution 1325 have not been implemented and women have occasionally been used as instruments in peace process. Meaningful participation of women is very important. In the past, women’s role in the peace process was decided from top to bottom. Women were never appointed to the leadership of High Council of Peace according to their expertise. Always political women took part in the negotiations, whereas women’s rights defenders and women academics must also be consulted.

Mr Sidiqullah Tuwhidi, director of Afghan Journalist Safety Committee, discussed the issue of the media and protection of women’s democratic rights. He said: in the recent period despite all the challenges and problems in Afghanistan, individual freedoms, human rights bodies, civil rights bodies and media have emerged. That means that we can overcome the problems in the future. The media have achieved a considerable quantitative growth in the last few years and have been able to report violation of women’s rights across Afghanistan, to make judicial bodies hear the cases of violence against women and to play a role in advocacy for women’s rights. We are worried that freedom of expression and women’s rights may be pushed to the sideline with the start of face-to-face negotiations with the Taliban and discussions about division of power. In that case, surely those freedoms shall be restricted, women’s hands will be tied again and their fundamental rights shall be abolished. That was noticeable in negotiations in Doha, where no reference was made to these issues and every country was talking about their own interests. This country will become a graveyard again if the values gained in the past two decades are not taken into consideration.

The last speaker was Ms Shukria Haidar, women’s rights activists and director of NEGAR Association. She said: young people should assume responsibility in political and social processes. Under the present circumstances, the Taleban are on one side. On the other side, we have the young generation, the press and higher education. The Taleban have not changed their views since 1996 to this day. Just like women, the young people do not have a role in the peace process and nobody pays any attention to them. Rights will not be handed down on a silver plate; they must be claimed. Our young and capable people must obtain their rights. We must not evade responsibility. We have not done enough in this regard. This country, city and street belong to us.

Armanshahr Foundation /OPEN ASIA was established as an independent organisation 24 years ago. This organisation has concentrated its human rights work mainly on countering war and militarism, promoting justice, defending victims, combating systematic violence against women and endeavouring to achieve a just and sustainable peace. The organisation is a pioneer on the study of violence against women and advocating for an end to it. Its national study on violence against women in Tajikistan in 1996 was used as a methodological model by international organisations, notably WHO in other countries.

In the past several years a series of mutually-supportive initiatives and programmes have been carried out by Armanshahr in order to build capacity, to support and promote women’s participation in political, social and transitional justice processes as well as in the nation’s macro decision-making processes. More than 60 public seminars about women’s rights from a total of 186 have been held by Armanshahr, allowing to make their voices and opinions visible. The organisation created the 50% Campaign for Women of Afghanistan, and established the Committee for +25% Women’s Quota in elected bodies, founded the Women’s International Film Festival-Herat in collaboration with Roya Film House, and initiated the ‘40-Braids international caravan of women’s films. The Simorgh International Peace Prize allocated its fourth edition to achievements of women of Afghanistan and the region. In 2018 the sixth edition of Human Rights Week focussed on women’s issues, gender-based violence and transitional justice, taking serious steps to raise consciousness.

Armanshahr has distributed more than 280,000 copies of books for free across Afghanistan in the past several years. Under its Women’s series, more than 50 titles (books, handbooks, and studies) were specifically published on women’s rights and women peace builders with a total print run in excess of 50,000 copies. Among them: Justice for Women in War and Peace, Topics in Feminist Theory, The Second Sex, Sexual and gender-based violence in war, Selections from Dictionnaire critique du féminisme, Selections from Sous les sciences sociales, le genre, Mother went to prison for the right to vote, Electoral Politics: Making Quotas Work for Women, Gender and Nation, Three Herati women, My Realm: Poems and photos by women; Together for Equality an illustrated text of CEDAW published recently to mark the 40th anniversary of the Convention. Throughout these years, Armanshahr has published 252 issues of “Women’s Human Rights e-bulletin” with the aim of monitoring the conditions of women’s rights in Afghanistan, the wider region and the world, and raising consciousness.

One of the pillars of Armanshahr’s activities has been paying attention to 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” (watch Film, watch Play) was established. In the 4thround of Simorgh Peace Prize, which has been organised five times to this date, women in all the three neighbouring countries at the heart of Asia – Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Iran – were praised as real guards of peace; women who hate war-mongering and resist it by means of their persevering civic initiatives.

Several campaigns, including “Unveiling Afghanistan, the Voices of Progress”, were pursued by Armanshahr in order to echo progressive, anti-war, justice and peace-seeking voices .

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 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.

Armanshahr has also produced two documentaries: “I (Eye) witness”, based on stories of common people about war, violence and forced migration during four decades of war; “Afghanistan: unveiling a never-ending tale”, which narrated the views of a number of male and female elite members of the society in relation to 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 advocate for the rights and participation of all social groups, in particular the vulnerable including women and children, in all its activities.