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28 Feb 2017 - 13:28
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28 Feb 2017 - 13:28

Afghan civil society’s involvements a positive change, 

The following paragraphs are an introduction to a real SEED inside the Afghan civil society forum and their positive impacts, the human energy and its capability.

Women’s role in Afghanistan community change have been always seen as an ordinary surface towards positive change but amazingly their aforementioned role is an existing capable SEED which can be grown into more positive way by using the more of human energy. 

Talking about the real seeds in a post-conflict society like Afghanistan is commonly referred to the broken hopes of that nation.  That means, there could be SEEDs that are capable of growing in a different society but no more in that particular post-conflict society because the conflicts happened and destroyed everything. So re-building such SEEDs need a certain time period or at some points it rebuilds itself if we succeeded in state building of that society.    

Here I want to talk about the positive role of women in Afghanistan Civil Society Organizations and their growing facets. 

The point I want to say is that can we expect the efforts and growing role of such people to come out and work for women rights, I believe the answer is definitely no. Because I want to say that it’s only women that are there and are capable of raising their voice and making a difference (a real seed in my community).

In a society where a woman being rap, killing them for being a woman, are being under domestic abuse and violence just because they are woman a different gender to the man. But surprisingly the opposite gender is the subject of all such behaviors, yes that is the opposite gender of women, a man and then hilariously some of these men who himself don’t respect nor give the rights to his own family females but coming out and gathered to build safe environment for other women, so funny! So it’s only women who can make safe environment for themselves, and build their prestige and raise the voice for their rights.

How it is Capable of Growing:

From what I know about the civil society, I believe it is as a voluntary task for multiple people who gathered together and have common belief and values.   On the other hand the western concepts of civil society organization, which is mostly applied for the development of the nations, is also not applicable because the western concept is getting harder to apply it in Afghanistan. So whatever development in terms of women’s empowerment have been taken so far is all because of the women which are out and want to do something but in real none of the mentioned theories are applicable. The question of, how come the women can be a growing seed, while we are talking about nation development, because in nations development we are no more limited to race or gender but this is inverse here in Afghanistan because we are still have problem with gender equality.

Why women are capable seed in Afghanistan.

Almost 45% of this population are women but surprisingly are mostly excluded from their very basic human rights and the reason is because the men are there and are working for the women rights whom are not honest. So, funny they are almost 50% almost the same range the same right and power.  

How the women are capable SEED inside the Afghan Civil Society Organizations. 

Now that international community is here in Afghanistan and years has been passed but so letter improvements because the ones claim themselves working for a change they were fake or their struggle was limited into written words. Now that’s a different issue because the real women are now there for their own rights. It’s only them that can focus on grassroots work. Now women ran several school projects that focus on preventing harassment and addressing women’s rights issues in general. They also organized demonstrations against honor killings of women and street harassment, in the streets and like this disseminated posters calling on people to stop these practices. 

Now there are women who write blogs to raise awareness. Besides, they conduct and organizes open lectures and discussions on the social media so this way to raise people’s awareness about women’s rights in Islam and in international law.

This is a great achievement; yes this is because it’s all by women for women. I don’t want to be stereotype, there have been men as well in most of these programs but the point I want to mention is that women are a capable and growing SEED which existed in our communities and can bring a lot of big positive changes which can help for a positive community change in Afghanistan.

Human Energy and their capability:

There have been women activists who have started their program in basic steps but the main goal was to start the conversation about Afghan women’s rights, find solutions to most common issues within the society, and the use of existing human energy in order to implement these solutions and reach to these goals. And fortunately so far they have been very successful in approaching those goals, particularly in recruiting volunteers, generating fruitful discussions, and finding collective solutions that respect the diversity of Afghan society. It’s because they are using the existing human energy in their own community.

A good partnership is there because they have common points among the mentioned groups, and those are joint history and goal, we all know that the wrong practices and actions against women are not part of our culture and having their basic rights are the rights of each of us. So this is the most important item on the list, the one thing from which everything else is flow the chain. Although I can’t name this partnership between the bottoms up or up- to bottoms but interestingly the more closely they have worked together the better the outcomes was. These nationwide women were friends, or at least friendly, but they had never worked together before. They went from the excitement of a conversation from the social media, or a conference, or like this maybe from a workshop but the fact seems to have led to a lot of other successful achievements which can be grown into more and big positive changes and achievements.

Seed Growing:

Along many other achievements now these different groups of women inside different civil society organizations are working to give a formal structure to these multiple and diverse nationwide women activities and their programs, which is very important as they are planning to grow and extend their geographic coverage in Afghanistan and to grow the current human energy the using. There are a lot of ladies that are graduated from their school but are not going to work in an office or a government institution although there is a job but because they don’t have protection, their privacy and simply they are not safe for working in such places. So these groups are a perfect place for them, on the other hand it was the civil society and the efforts of these women inside these groups who launched a street harassment reports and are following up with the ministry of women affairs to response them in the progress of the ongoing cases related to women.  The women handicraft project is another big achievement towards stabilizing women in Afghanistan. This is another great achievement also opportunity for thousands of housewives that are not allowed to work outside their homes, so this way they can still make a big impact on their community both economical and culturally. Most of the females used to work in their homes on different handicrafts products then were sending it to outside markets which were getting less money but fortunately now their programs are also organized because these women in the Civil Society are working on growing market for these products and making their relations to the outside market even to international markets. 

The aforementioned is a real capable SEED in my community which can play a more vital role towards the positive change in Afghanistan. That’s why for a positive change in a SEED-SCALE we need the human energy, our hidden current opportunities, partnership and finally the change. So in considering this SEED we almost achieved all of them.   

 

View expressed in this article are of the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok’s editorial policy.

 

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The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok's editorial policy.

Author's brief introduction

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Yasar Ahmadzai M.A is Director of Afghanistaninfo-icon Institute of Peace

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