Empowering Afghan Women with CDRO
Preamble
In 2022, Afghanistan faced a multifaceted crisis characterized by political instability, humanitarian emergencies, and developmental challenges. The country’s economy, heavily reliant on international aid, faced severe strains as financial assistance from foreign donors was either paused or redirected.
Humanitarian conditions rapidly deteriorated, with millions of Afghans facing food insecurity, displacement, and limited access to basic services such as healthcare and education. Concerns over women’s rights added to the international community’s apprehension.
Development efforts were disrupted, with infrastructure projects stalled and economic prospects uncertain. The withdrawal of international troops further complicated security dynamics, leading to increased violence and instability in certain regions.
Overall, Afghanistan in 2022 grappled with profound challenges as it navigated a new political landscape while international stakeholders debated their engagement and support strategies.
In 2022, NGOs operating in Afghanistan faced severe challenges amid the country’s crisis. Escalating security threats jeopardized the safety of personnel and hindered access to vulnerable communities in need of aid. Funding uncertainties and restrictions on international aid flows further strained resources, impacting the ability to sustain operations and deliver essential services like healthcare and food assistance. Operational complexities, including navigating bureaucratic hurdles and adapting to shifting political landscapes, added to the difficulties. Despite these obstacles, NGOs played a critical role in providing humanitarian relief and advocating for human rights amidst the turmoil, emphasizing coordination with other actors to maximize impact and efficiency in a challenging environment.
CDRO success and efforts:
Despite constraints in aid and challenges accessing funding, compounded by Afghanistan’s security, climate, and geographical complexities, CDRO remained dedicated and effective in addressing vulnerabilities and the impacts of crises. Its strategic plans and services successfully reached and benefitted numerous vulnerable populations in a number of crisis settings and needed areas.
Brief on Cash distribution strategy:
- Organizational:
- Organization staff well capacitated in project management, monitoring, survey, selection, registration and assistance delivery [cash distribution].
- Organizational systems, policies and procedures applied and utilized and endorsed by all the involved parties and beyond that.
- Organizational resources increased and the potential for sustainability developed.
- The staff skills and expertise maximized favorably.
- Stakeholder identification, engagement capacity, mutual relationship and partnership developed.
- Orientation with the UN Agency organizational environment including policies, procedures frameworks, humanitarian principles and other administrative rules and regulations maintained.
- Additional practical and theoretical lessons from the past activities were exercised and new lessons and best practices were gained for future interventions.
- Humanitarian:
- The lives of at risk people (households) protected – those who were served with cash assistance.
- The capacity of the targeted population/households increased in access to the basic services, particularly a viable response to the interview questions, contact and communication, complaint response mechanism and raising complaints was built.
- Stakeholders involvement exercised, achieved and promoted.
- Stakeholders perspectives evolved in women rights and freedom to access to the basic humanitarian services in crisis setting and other than.
- Other concerns addressed hopefully.
- Assessment, interviews and beneficiary selection and registration.
- Beneficiary screening and double check.
- Registration and entry to the database.
- Distribution plan and arrangement.
- Staff training and education.
- Beneficiary awareness and education on the distribution plan, cash entitlement, organization of the distribution event, AAP, PSEA, communication and access strategy to complaint address (point of contact) and feedback response mechanism.
- Conflict resolution, answer to the objections and special messages.
- Stakeholder meetings and coordination.
- Participating in the Cluster meetings.
- Distribution process, staff involvement, organization and best interaction with the beneficiaries, particularly women, girls, elders and disable persons.
- Safety and security practices and preparedness at all stages.
Activity description:
CDRO conducted a number of four days’ conflict resolution workshops for the beneficiaries in Chimtal and Shulgar districts and built the capacity on different topics of social cohesion, conflict prevention, resilience building, and identifying development related needs in their community. The knowledge and skills gained in these workshops contributed to resolve conflicts and enjoy their living. A female participant Bibi Haji said “This is the first time we have received such a training; we have had many conflicts in the community. Most of our conflicts were on child and family related issues which were hard to formalize with the formal justice sector as it is considered a shame and as well as it is costly and time-consuming. Fortunately, the knowledge and skills we learned today will help us in resolving the conflicts ourselves.”
In addition, GBV (gender-based violence) event was arranged for 300 male and female attendees to debate and address the gender based violence. Different types of gender based issues were discussed and the participants were equipped with essential skills and knowledge to identify and prevent gender based violence. One of the participants of the training in Shulgar district said that she would voluntarily train other females on the topics. Later on, the discussion resulted in the formation of a volunteer mentor group comprised of literate females and they pledged to transfer the knowledge and skills to other females in their communities.
More respective, a road-side stone masonry walls were constructed to prevent side and soil erosion and improve the bilateral relations between the communities for joint work and decision making with impact of promoting and building resilience and solidarities to resolve their issues themselves and reduce conflicts. The community elders said such coordination were helpful as most often it is hard to work and resolve a conflict without keeping the de facto authorities in picture.
The same activity was accomplished in Samangan province, Aybak and Khuram Sarbagh districts. Around 400 people including men and women were trained on conflict resolution, peace building, social cohesion, and preventing gender-based violence, coordination among various community members, resilience building, advocacy and lobbying skills.
CDRO strongly worked with the people in order that the social cohesion should be improved. The communities were equipped with particular skills and tools required to help support the development of community-led needs-based socioeconomic recovery plans that promote reconciliation and prevent conflict, improve access to justice, support alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and protect the rights of women and girls. Interventions were implemented in a participatory manner to ensure that activities are responsive to local needs and priorities and contribute to community resilience building.
Women and youth groups were highly mobilized and motivated to participate in the training and capacity building sessions, and they were very happy about the training and knowledge improvement. They expressed in-depth willing to learn and further disseminate the knowledge and skills to other communities through a sound relationship and collaboration skills, meetings and traditional ceremonies. They expressed that these training and knowledge are very responsive to reduce conflicts, gender sensitiveness, religious and cultural sensitiveness against the rights of people, including women, children and youths.