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, 25 June 2014 – The Afghan Shelter Network (ASN) along with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA), with support from the International Development Law Organization (IDLO), will launch the “Women’s Protection Centers Guidelines” for the Afghanistan Shelters Network, on the 25th of June 2014.
The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) in Afghanistan has launched the process of creating ten more units specialized in combatting violence against women. Dubbed ‘EVAW’ from the 2009 law aimed at reducing gender violence, the units are prosecution taskforces.
IDLO is supporting Afghanistan’s National Justice Sector Strategy to improve the quality and delivery of justice and legal services in line with constitutional, Shari’a and international standards. We have assisted in the development of various Afghan justice institutions and legal entities, including an Independent National Legal Training Center. We are also contributing to the Government’s strategy on legal awareness, while empowering the Afghan people through public campaigns on issues related to gender justice, violence against women, human rights, and the availability of legal services
Reducing violence against Afghan women and girls has been one of our priority areas of intervention. Although the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (LEVAW) has been stuck in the Afghan parliament for years, the Attorney General’s Office in 2009 used the law's framework to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with IDLO. The aim was to support the creation of a specialized unit that would prosecute cases of gender violence.
The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) today launched its newest and most ambitious project to date in Afghanistan: the Justice Training Transition Program (JTTP) made possible through the support of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the U.S. State Department.
“I am here to say to you that we need IDLO, and if it did not exist today, we would have to invent it – because it does something that must be done, and [that] so far, no one else in the world is doing.” The statement, by Assistant US Secretary of State for Narcotics and Law Enforcement William Brownfield, came as he opened a congressional briefing on Thursday, April 11th.
In December 2006, IDLO assisted graduates from its Defense Lawyers Training in launching a nationwide Afghan movement to promote access to justice and legal awareness, and provide legal aid services to the poor. Ever since, IDLO has supported and improved legal aid in Afghanistan through training, technical assistance, monitoring, evaluation and financial support.
The weight of custom and the failings of the formal justice system mean most Afghans only access justice via informal dispute resolution mechanisms. With this in mind, IDLO has been assisting informal justice actors to perform their duties within basic legal standards and a human-rights positive framework.
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Notes From The Field
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Interview
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