Afghanistan emerged from Taliban rule in 2001 as an institutional wasteland. The justice deficit was acute, making the country a test case for law-based nation-building. Ever since, IDLO has been working with the Afghan government to drive judicial reform and foster the rule of law. And as Afghanistan takes charge of its own future, IDLO has been stepping up efforts to expand legal capacity and promote human rights. Advancing legal protection for women and combating gender violence have been among our priorities. IDLO has helped create an infrastructure of legal aid to victims, while supporting the prosecution of crimes against women and girls.
But Afghanistan remains a brittle post-conflict society. We have trained Afghan public defenders, empowered the poor to seek legal aid, and helped build legal resources in most of the country’s provinces. We have developed legal textbooks, reconstituted an entire pre-war body of lost law, and contributed to the establishment of a law library at the University of Kabul. Thousands of Afghan legal professionals – judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, MPs, civil servants and academics – are benefiting from this knowledge transfer.
Afghanistan has been an IDLO member party since November 2012.
(Kabul, Afghanistan) A delegation of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), led by its Director-General Irene Khan, has concluded a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan where she met President Ashraf Ghani and the leadership of the country’s justice institutions to discuss the importance of justice sector reform i
Good laws are one thing; implementation is another. Texts and statutes are critical instruments in advancing the rule of law -- but their benefits are limited if those tasked with their application, let alone their intended beneficiaries, fail to understand them. Where a gap develops between the law and what the legal profession makes of it, abuse and injustice will thrive.
In the past month in Afghanistan:
It was Valentine’s day – a time for celebrating love and friendship for many - but in Kunduz province Afghanistan, a newly-wed pregnant woman lost her baby, reportedly, in a brutal exorcism carried out by a local mullah.
While the justice sector in Afghanistan has progressed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, legal awareness and access to justice throughout the country are still lagging behind. A 2016 World Justice Project report found that only 23 per cent of Afghan citizens used the formal justice system to settle disputes, and less than half reported to have trust in the state courts. As a result, and combined with the pressure of social norms, potential justice users, particularly women, are deterred from using the formal system and are often unable to obtain fair remedies for grievances
Roundtable: Justice for Women by Women - Challenges and Opportunities for Women’s Professional Participation in the Justice Sector
March 18, 2014, 1:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Commission on the Status of Women
Conference room 6, NLB (North Lawn Building)
United Nations Headquarters, New York
IDLO's report Women’s Professional Participation in Afghanistan’s Justice Sector: Challenges and Opportunities has been launched in Kabul by the IDLO
 Reflections From The Field
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 Interview
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