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Post Conflict Reconstruction and Women’s Participation

Briefing Hosted by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus

Co-Chairs and members of this caucus:
On behalf of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, thank you for this opportunity to brief you. As Senior Coordinator, I manage a partnership program with women’s groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia and Sierra Leone. I also manage our Afghan Women’s Fund, through which we disburse and monitor grants to local women’s groups.

The Women’s Commission is an advocacy and expert resource organization that promotes the rights and needs of war-affected women, children and adolescents worldwide. We are a member of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security which pressed for UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and continues to monitor its implementation. We have been working with Afghan women leaders for 15 years.

This is a timely subject because women like Sharifa, the leader of an Afghan women’s organization who fought for 20 years to educate girls and successfully sensitize communities to promote women’s rights, is now pessimistic. Parts of Afghanistan are newly insecure – too insecure for Sharifa to open education and women’s rights programs due to banditry and lawlessness. According to the UN, more than 30 girls’ schools have been attacked since the Taliban fell, the most recent on March 2.

Although I will focus my remarks on women’s participation in the Afghan context, I sit before you hearing the voices of women around the world – including those represented by today’s panelists – who are reminding us: We are not learning from our mistakes. We are not taking women’s participation seriously. I have four points to make in this regard.

Participation
Effective participation includes women in decision-making, management, monitoring and implementation. It also involves centering our decisions on what the conflict and the rebuilding means from a woman’s perspective with equal weight to the views of men.

To be effective in the post-conflict stage, participation must begin at the outset of conflict.
For decades, Afghan women’s groups based in Pakistan have been training women and girls in basic literacy, computer and English – skills necessary to rebuild Afghanistan, and to better ensure women’s participation in the post conflict period. A few of these groups received assistance from the U.S. government, through grants given by international agencies based in the region.

After September 11, while international agencies began receiving millions of dollars to expand or establish operations in Afghanistan, women’s groups were struggling to pay the $500 registration fee to the Afghan Ministry of Planning and navigate the registration system so they too could participate in the reconstruction. The Women’s Commission’s Afghan Women’s Fund immediately disbursed grants to help some of them establish offices in Kabul – to pay rent, buy furniture and equipment – because donors either did not understand the challenges these groups were facing, or did not see this as a priority. There was keen interest among private donors to fund women’s programs directly, but how can you implement a project, if you don’t have a presence? The importance of the work of local women’s groups throughout the war was not treated with equal weight to the work of the UN and international agencies.

Despite obstacles, these women’s organizations are quietly working in Afghanistan to promote women’s rights. They are working in dozens of small communities across the country where international agencies, including UNIFEM and the Afghan Ministry for Women’s Affairs, are often not present nor trusted. These groups are making an impact on changing community attitudes on women’s rights inside Afghanistan, just as they were successful among refugee communities in Pakistan.

Humanitarian Assistance: Pakistan
Ignoring the needs of Afghan refugees in Pakistan is another example of how we are failing to support the participation and ensure protection of women in post-conflict Afghanistan.

An estimated 2.1 million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan. Although most international and local Afghan agencies have pulled out, the Afghan women’s groups are still there, stretching time and resources to help the poorest of the poor who cannot afford or lack the skills to return to Afghanistan. They are children like seven-year-old Hanif, who spends 12 hours per day collecting garbage in the streets. They are widows like Noori, who moved her family from one settlement to another in Peshawar after her home was bulldozed by the Pakistani government last fall. Although the Afghan community leader is allowing Noori’s family to live rent-free, they are paying a high price – he is sexually abusing her children, and the Pakistani authorities do not consider it a crime. Women’s groups are also helping those who are coming from Afghanistan to escape early or forced marriage because Afghanistan’s community and legal systems are failing them.

These refugees need our support in order to return, as well as participate in rebuilding Afghanistan. The United States and the international community in general have turned their backs.

Every few weeks the leaders of women’s groups are shuttling between branch offices in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is grinding them down as they must travel the eight hours by road between Peshawar and Kabul, the same road that international organizations stay away from because it is insecure. The women get questioned by the Pakistani border guards, and pulled over by armed elements. They are constantly in fear of being attacked because they are women’s rights activists. They cannot afford to pay the $120 for flights provided by the UN and, as local Afghans, are not permitted to join staff of international agencies on the International Committee for the Red Cross’ free flights. This issue is the same for women who seek to travel across Afghanistan, yet donors have told them to delete travel costs from their budgets. Barriers to mobility are undermining the participation of women in Afghan reconstruction and increasing their risk of being attacked.

Afghanistan: Security, Mobility, Funding
There has been plenty of discussion on the lack of security in Afghanistan. Attacks against local staff of international assistance agencies occur almost daily. In October the Taliban issued public threats against Afghan women working with international agencies in Logar province. In December a bomb exploded outside the Jalalabad office of a women’s organization we are working with.

In October I met with a coalition of women’s groups in Kabul and they raised their priorities for Afghanistan. Last week they told me the same challenges persist.

I share their recommendations with you today, as we bear in mind one of the much-publicized reasons for toppling the Taliban was to ensure that the rights of women are respected. As much as this is a responsibility for Afghans themselves, and a slow process, there is still more that we can do to help them reach this goal.

1. Expand international security presence across Afghanistan and accelerate the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program. Enhanced presence will help to get weapons out of the hands of bandits, as well as private homes, which would ease restrictions on women’s ability to speak out in public fora, and to move freely. We must also apply what we have learned about such programs in Kosovo and in Sierra Leone – ensure that international forces do not further violate the rights of women, and that programs are designed to prevent an increase in domestic violence and substance abuse among men, which can increase in post-conflict settings.

2. Strengthen support to women’s groups and acknowledge their role in reconstruction and protection. Their activities are vital in the slow process of changing community attitudes on the rights of women. Grant cycles and funding priorities of institutions including UNIFEM and the Women’s Ministry need to be reviewed. Three-month funding cycles are not sufficient for planning sustainable programs, and lags in disbursement put pressure on women’s groups to keep activities running in order to maintain community trust. Losing the trust incites "fundamentalist" anti-women elements to take advantage of the situation and undermine their progress. If we are really committed to supporting women’s participation in reconstruction, grants should be for at least one year and include travel budgets.

3. Women and Children in Armed Conflict Protection Act [S 1001, H.R. 2536]
Finally, as you have heard today, we are talking about more than Afghanistan. The voices of women I have listened to in Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zambia, Turkey and Colombia, are resounding in my ears and they are saying that we need to move beyond ad-hoc responses.

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children urges Congress to expeditiously pass the Women and Children in Armed Conflict Protection Act, S 1001 and H.R. 2536. This legislation ensures a comprehensive approach to upholding the rights of women affected by war and demonstrates that the protection of women and children is a priority of the U.S. Government. If passed and signed into law by the President, this Act would:

Require the United States Government to develop an integrated strategy for protecting women and children in all stages of conflict, and report that strategy to Congress.

Stipulate that U.S. foreign assistance programs include activities that increase the access and participation of women and youth in conflict prevention and resolution, economic and political empowerment, and leadership development.

Designate a Protection Coordinator to be responsible for overseeing U.S. government efforts to protect women and children in conflict situations.

Extend the availability of micro-enterprise programs to refugees and displaced persons.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you.