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Gender & Human Rights

The Afghan Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of gender and provides for equal rights and duties before the law. The reality is that moving towards gender equality in the daily life is a considerably challenging process.

Gender refers to the social differences and relations between men and women, which are learned, vary widely among societies and cultures and change over time. The term gender does not replace the term “sex” which refers exclusively to biological differences between men and women.

After a consultants assessment of the situation a SCA Task Force was established in the beginning of 2005. Members of the Task Force were elected among KMO and regional staff. Recommendations formulated by the Task Force are guiding the work of the new Gender and Human Rights Unit.
In the coming years SCA will move towards integrating both Gender and Human Rights into its programmes and central support unit’s activities, which is in line with both government priorities and SCA policy, decided by the Annual Meeting in 2004. This is an ongoing process. The goal is to achieve equal access to the services provided by SCA and its professional gender sensitive staff.

It is essential that programmes focusing on gender issues are thoroughly discussed in local languages and explained in relation to religious and cultural traditions to become sustainable. Progress on gender issues is not possible to achieve without cooperation and understanding by men as well as by women, and with support by the whole family and community. In Afghanistan, the concept of gender is not easily translated into local languages, it has to be paraphrased.

Gender and Human Right´s Strategy

SCA’s Gender and Human Rights Unit has developed a three year strategy for working with gender and human rights. The immediate objective is to initiate, implement and follow up activities to increase gender awareness and understanding of human rights issues. The second step is to use the strategy of mainstreaming with direct impact on reaching equal accessibility to services. The third step is going to be advocacy work on gender issue findings in rural areas in cooperation with different civil society groups.

The intended outcomes are two-fold:

* Gender and Human Rights are to be fully integrated into SCA programmes irrespective of who (SCA or the government) is ultimately the implementing agency
* Advocacy on achievements and ongoing issues can be a long term continuity of SCA’s role in Afghanistan through provision of data to national specialized agencies, and/or internationally to SCA in Sweden

SCA has about 4500 permanent and project staff at KMO and in the regions. To be able to provide the staff awareness raising activities SCA has chosen to work through Gender and Human Rights Focal points at KMO and in the regions combined with trainings provided by the Gender and Human Rights Unit. In 2005 all school consultants and education officers as well as the selected focal points were trained for all together 12 days each.

In the end of 2005 SCA had 28 Gender Focal Points (16 male and 12 female). The gender focal points have a central function and they are the key “engines” to disseminate understanding and support both regionally and by programme sector. They were selected by the Heads of units at KMO and by the Regional Directors. Their task is to stimulate and push the gender human rights work among their colleagues.

Cooperation with other actors

The Gender and Human Rights Unit is also cooperating with other actors working in this field, for example the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the gender focal point at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD). SCA is also participating in ACBAR’s gender task force meetings and joined the board of the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium in early 2005.

Several seminars and workshops on human rights have been arranged together with AIHRC and the Civil Society Forum.

Other links:

To read more about Gender and Human Rights in Afghanistan and in general please visit:

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission www.aihrc.org.af
Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org
Amnesty International www.amnesty.org
To read which Conventions that has been ratified by Afghanistan, please click here: www.aihrc.org.af