{"id":10350,"date":"2019-01-09T17:31:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T15:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=10350"},"modified":"2019-01-17T10:45:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T08:45:57","slug":"what-went-on-at-geneva-conference-people-were-absent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2019\/01\/what-went-on-at-geneva-conference-people-were-absent\/","title":{"rendered":"Armanshahr 6th Human Rights Week: What went on at Geneva Conference? People were absent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, 10 December 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

Armanshahr Foundation, in collaboration with Afghanistan Women\u2019s News Agency, Afghanistan Democracy and Development Organisation and the \u201cGreen Home\u201d Influential Women and Youth Organization, held a public dialogue conference with the title of \u201cWhat went on in Geneva Conference? People were absent,\u201d at the premises of the \u201cGreen Home\u201d Influential Women and Youth Organization on Monday, 10 December 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Scores of civil rights activists, human rights and women\u2019s rights defenders, cultural activists and students attended the conference. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Forouzan Mashal, director of the Public Awareness Time Hour Organization, and Ms Lia Javad, director of the Feminine Solidarity for Justice Organization, who represented Afghanistan\u2019s civil society in the Geneva Conference in Switzerland, reported to the meeting about the achievements and basic contents of that Conference.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr Abdullah Ahmadi, director of Afghanistan Democracy and Development Organisation and moderator of the meeting, welcomed the participants and the panellists. He said: \u201cThe Geneva conference was held on 28-29 November 2018, hosted by Afghanistan and the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The peace process, security, continuation of aid by the international community to Afghanistan, empowerment of women, human rights and refugee rights were the important topics of discussion at the Conference.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government of Afghanistan has committed itself under Resolutions 1325, 1820 and 2106 of the United Nations Security Council to protect women against sexual and gender-based violence in conflicts and to facilitate their effective participation in peace and security processes. We hope that the commitments made by the government and the international community at the Geneva Conference to provide security, justice and peace shall be fulfilled. However, those commitments shall be fulfilled if citizens and the civil society remain active, engage in advocacy work and follow up on the commitments of the government and the international community.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking on the basic contents of the Geneva conference, positions of the civil society on peace and women, its interpretations, challenges and recommendations to the Geneva Conference, Ms Forouzan Mashal said: \u201cThe position of the civil society was that women must participate in the peace process and Afghanistan\u2019s achievements regarding women must not be ignored. The other thing that we demanded was that the government of Afghanistan should not ignore the position of the civil society and in particular its monitoring role in any of their processes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government of Afghanistan committed itself at the Geneva Conference to provide for security and peace, improve the political and economic conditions and strengthen the private sectors by 2020.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Mashal said that she and her colleague were planning to formulate a plan to monitor the implementation of the government\u2019s commitments at the Geneva Conference and would share it with the people when it was ready.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rights of migrants was one of the important topics at the Geneva Conference. Rights of migrants, refugees and the internally displaced people is one of the biggest challenges for the government of Afghanistan and constitute an international topic of discussion. Ms Lia Javad was invited to discuss factors causing people to migrate to European countries, the increasing figures of migration from Afghanistan, and the failure of the international organisations and host countries to address the rights of refugees from Afghanistan based on their commitments under international law and their obligations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The essence of Ms Javad\u2019s address was: The government is incapable of providing security to the people and insecurity is the most important factor causing migrants to leave their country. In recent years, some government officials who have failed to provide for security, have alleged that Afghans mostly migrate not because they are forced to but because of they are capricious. Asylum seekers, however reject this claim and say that they wished to invest in the country to combat unemployment and to avoid the disintegration of their families, but insecurity persuaded them to migrate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms Javad added: \u201cWar and insecurity, unemployment, economic problems, job insecurity in various offices and departments are the most important factors of migration. Furthermore, religious, political, social and economic problems, the powerful Mafia, conflicts between organisations and lingual conflicts, the failure of various departments to recruit people based on their merits are other factors that prompt migration. In urban centres, merited young people lacking good contacts to the powerful Mafia are rarely recruited. In the provinces, young people face serious threats from the Taleban, ISIL and unaccountable armed groups, who prompt specialised and merited young people to flee Afghanistan.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe ask the European Union to carry on their humanitarian aid and cooperation in previous years, to take promising decisions and to help refugees.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, a number of participants asked questions to the panellists, who responded in turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the meeting, the newly published titles of Armanshahr were distributed among the participants, including Silence (an anthology of stories, Alice Munro), The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Land of Green Plums\u201d (Herta M\u00fcller), My Ideal City (illustrated selection of drawings by children for the 5<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> International Simorgh Peace Prize). Armanshahr has printed more than 200,000 copies of different titles on human rights, women, transitional justice, literature and children\u2019s literature over 12 years in Afghanistan, which have been donated to libraries, universities, civil society institutions, students, cultural activists and writers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2013, Armanshahr Foundation has been organising the \u201cHuman Rights Week\u201d at the beginning of December, marking the International Human Rights Day, by holding educational workshops, public conferences, cultural and artistic events with the aim of raising the capacity of civil society institutions and promoting the culture of respect for human rights. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, 10 December 2018 Armanshahr Foundation, in collaboration with Afghanistan Women\u2019s News Agency, Afghanistan Democracy and Development Organisation and the \u201cGreen Home\u201d Influential Women and Youth Organization, held a public dialogue conference with the title […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,35,90,85,43,800,88],"tags":[1041,1042,379],"class_list":["post-10350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-conferences","category-editor-selection","category-human-rights","category-human-rights-online-library","category-human-rights-week-celebrations","category-slider","tag-armanshahr-conferences","tag-debate","tag-human-rights-week","country-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10424,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10350\/revisions\/10424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}