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.
As a post-conflict country, Afghanistan continues to operate in a complex and fragile environment characterized by political instability, weak institutions and diminished public confidence.
Just one year after IDLO first helped the Afghanistan Attorney-General’s Office (AGO) develop and launch a specialized database to track violence against women cases, the system has transformed the AGO’s ability to generate accurate statistics and pro
Over 5,000 people across several provinces in Afghanistan have learned about violence against women and citizens’ legal rights through an awareness campaign supported by IDLO.
Over 5,000 people across several provinces in Afghanistan have learned about violence against women and citizens’ legal rights through an awareness campaign supported by IDLO.
When women survivors of violence in Afghanistan seek justice for the crimes perpetrated against them, they must be able to trust the authorities to protect their identity and treat their case with discretion.
An important advancement in Afghanistan has been the development of a comprehensive electronic database to track cases of violence against women and girls across the country. Launched in 2016, it is now being used in 20 provinces.
As part of IDLO’s continuous commitment to accountability and results-based management, IDLO is pleased to share this Mid-Term Evaluation Brief (summarised evaluation report): “Supporting Access to Justice in Afghanistan (SAJA)”. The evaluation has been conducted by independent evaluation experts, supervised by IDLO’s Evaluation Unit.
Mosooma* is 29 years old, and the only woman in a group of two dozen civil and commercial law instructors working for the Government and Bar Association in Afghanistan.
Despite significant donor assistance and a marked improvement over the past decade, Afghanistan's justice institutions still suffer from a severe lack of capacity across a range of basic competencies. These deficiencies persist due to a variety of factors, including the high turnover of staff in justice sector institutions and a lack of focus on developing the internal capacity of institutions to manage their own professional development.
A delegation led by Afghan Attorney General, Farid Hamidi, participated in the 21st Annual Conference of the International Association of Prosecutors in Dublin this month, with the support of IDLO.
