International Women's Day

Today, 8 March, is International Women’s Day. The theme for this year is ending impunity for violence against women. Not surprisingly this is an issue about which I am fairly passionate. Here in Afghanistan the levels of violence perpetrated against women and girls is heartbreaking. Worse, the victims are almost entirely without any recourse to justice, protection or even an escape.

But as striking as the problem is here in Afghanistan, the women here are not alone. Women all over the world, including in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, are living with violence.

Some statistics about violence against women and girls:

• Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.
• Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.
• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her.
• Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.
• It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically "missing." They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.
• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.
• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.
• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world's conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.
• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

I find the thought of it overwhelming, this violence going on all around us all over the world. Violence against women is a crime, whether it is perpetrated by family or strangers, in the public sphere or behind closed doors, in times of peace or conflict. States have an obligation to protect women and girls from violence, to hold accountable perpetrators and provide justice and remedies to the victims. I spend a lot of my working time to assist states to better fulfill this obligation, and holding them accountable when they do not. But ending violence is not just the Government’s responsibility – everyone in society, men and women, has a responsibility to act when confronted with such violence. Today on International Women’s Day I urge you all to take action to prevent this violence going unnoticed, unpunished and unhindered. Find a small step that you feel comfortable taking:

• volunteer to train to be the contact point for women and girls in your office or school who have been bullied or harassed;
• report the domestic violence going on in your apartment building to the police;
• approach a domestic violence victim support organization in your community and ask for their suggestions;
• make a donation to an organization working to help women who are recovering from violence in war-affected countries;
• paint, draw, photograph or write about violence, or about ways to end or recover from violence.

I’m sure you’ll think of a hundred more ways to take action to end violence against women. Share your ideas and inspire others.

One week in Badghis

This week I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of working with a good friend, the lovely, hardworking and very competent Kate. It has been a busy and often challenging week as I simultaneously:

• managed the logistics for the workshop Kate has been teaching on criminal justice, with a focus on gender issues;
• delivered my own 'introduction to human rights' workshop for all the staff of our new Badghis office;
• monitored and supported the Attorney General’s “Campaign Against Torture” as it was carried out in Badghis; and
• followed up on a series of individual human rights cases with police, prosecutors and the Chief Judge.

But despite the heavy workload, the physical challenges of a mission to Badghis and the mental and emotional strain, it has been a wonderful week. Firstly, and most importantly, I've been doing all this alongside Kate, whio is delightful company and a caring friend. Secondly, I feel this week as though we are achieving something positive, Thirdly, and possibly as a result of the previous two points, I’ve had a week mostly free from the oppressive presence of the black dog. Warning - this is a long post – it has been a long and very full week! The emotional strain noted above comes from dealing with the individual cases. One related to eight men charged with the murders of five health clinic staff but who have now been detained for months and months beyond the legal time limits. These murders sent deep ripples of fear and sadness through the development community in Afghanistan when they took place last year. The victims were Afghan staff of an NGO running health clinics in an otherwise unserved district of Badghis, they were shot and killed by armed men who burst into the clinic compound and opened fire. Eigth months later, after the charges against these suspects were found to be without substance at the primary court, they are still detained and awaiting the hearing of the appeal by the National Security Directorate. I lobbied the NSD Prosecutor and the Chief Judge and received assurances that a trial date will be set this week. My concern is not only for the rights of the detainees (although this is a serious concern especially given their aquittal at the primary court trial) but also for the families of the victims who badly need some sort of resolution. Another difficult case was that of a young women who died after burning herself in desperation after years of domestic violence. Her parents do not want to press charges against the husband. Fortunately in Afghan law they don’t need to, the police and prosecutors have an obligation to investigate wherever there is an indication that a crime has taken place, but sometimes they need a little bit of encouragement. Kate helped me explain to the prosecutors the legal basis on which they could proceed - with charges of assault being relatively easy to make out, and a possibility even of a more complicated but not impossible charge of murder or incitement to suicide. The workshop Kate was teaching has been my pet project for months now – ever since I made my first mission to Badghis. I found that it was difficult to intervene with police and prosecutors on many cases, especially cases involving women, because they were not necessarily familiar with the relevant provisions of Afghan law, including the Constitution. Several misconceptions were particularly widespread – including the belief that article 130 of the Constitution gives police and prosecutors the right to refer to Hanafi fiqh jurisprudence (interpretations of the Quran by some designated experts) if there is no relevant provision in the law. In fact this article gives such a right only to the courts. Another widely held view, and one which is usually based on the article 130 argument, is that it is a crime for women to run away from home and that they can be arrested, detained and prosecuted as such. There is no such crime in the Penal Code, and the so-called “crime” is derived from a widely held interpretation of Hanafi fiqh – relying on article 130 of the Constitution. Okay, I’m writing my way into a fairly complicated legal discussion here which would require me to discuss the different kinds of crimes in Sharia (Islamic) law, and the particular way in which these three different types of crime (ta’zir, qasas, and hadood) are treated in Afghan law. It is an extremely interesting legal discussion, but probably only to criminal lawyers, Sharia scholars and human rights lawyers. So instead I will summarise by saying that the applicable law in Afghanistan (applying as it does key principles of Sharia law) provides protection for women in many of the types of cases that I often encounter in my monitoring work. Many police and to a lesser but still significant extent, prosecutors are not familiar with Afghan law. If they do know some of the key provisions, they have often never had access to a clear legal analysis of how different sections interact with each other. In my regular monitoring work I often try to raise awareness of these provisions on a case-by-case basis. But obviously a more systematic approach would be better. The Attorney General’s office in Kabul is currently developing a national training and professional development strategy, which will hopefully bring a consistent and national approach to all training for prosecutors. But after a year in Afghanistan, approximately half of which I spent in Kabul and the other half working in some of the countries most remote and neglected provinces (like Badghis and Ghor), I’ve realised that waiting for national or centralised programmes to reach us out here is going to be a very long wait. So I decided to make it my goal to bring the best trainers I could find to Badghis and Ghor. Kate is one of the best, and I'm not only saying that because I am so fond of her, I saying that as a lawyer and someone with experience of training. Not only is she qualified in Sharia law, common law and civil law, she is also intimately familiar with Afghan law and she is a skilled teacher, using participatory methods, like roles plays and case studies, to create a really effective learning experience. My organization doesn’t organise workshops of this kind, so I have no budget for it. Kate’s organization has provided her time and the workshop materials, but everything else – including our accommodation and meals here in Badghis, the tea and sweets, the paper, the pens, and the lovely colour-printed certificates were paid for by Kathryn and I personally. I asked my friends at the Spanish PRT to help out by providing a cooked lunch for the participants each day and they did a great job. The Department of Women’s Affairs gave us a room for two days and then the provincial hospital let us use there large meeting room for the rest of the week. The participants all paid for their own transport to travel from the districts into Qala-e-Naw, the provincial centre. I’m not sure how they were accommodated while in town for the week, I hope that the Office of the Prosecutor and the Provincial Chief of Police helped with that. We didn’t pay per diems which is a common practice here since the official salaries are too low for people to actually survive on them. All in all it was a budget workshop and Kate and I would not have been surprised if turn out had been low as a result. Instead we had the provincial head of the CID, as well as District Chiefs of Police and CID Chiefs from almost all the districts in Badghis. We also had District Prosecutors from all districts and a good delegation from the provincial Office of the Prosecutor. We also had one female Provincial Council member, someone I had met on previous visits because she takes on a role in advocating for women in the legal system here in Badghis, and two senior staff from the Department of Women’s Affairs. Put simply, we had everyone we could have hoped for, all the people who have the power to choose whether or not to arrest and prosecute a man alleged to be beating his wife, or a woman who has been accused of farar az manzel or running away from home. They are also the people who will decide how to deal with a case of rape – which does not exist as a separate crime in the Penal Code, but can be prosecuted under zina (sex outside of marriage) provisions – and who will need to decide whether or not to also prosecute the rape victim for zina (not uncommon). So after months of battling some administrative and substantive barriers within my own organization, and then several false starts when bad weather preventing Kate travelling from Kabul to Herat, she finally arrived last week. We had a lovely Friday together in Herat during which I got to play tour guide and we also enjoyed the relatively balmy weather (it seems the “big cold” is over in Herat, Payman who cooks at our guesthouse tell me so). We visited the famous minarets of Herat and Kate took some lovely photos of the guardian, and of the graves in the shrine next to the minarets. The graves are those of the son of Timur and his wife, a godly woman to whom this shrine is dedicated, and their three children. I also took Kate to my personal favorite, this monument to the ordinary people of Afghanistan who fought against the Soviet occupiers. There are, of course, many different views about the different episodes of Afghanstan's history and I try to avoid giving the impression that I understand any of them well enough to have formed my own. I simply love this monument for it's audacity and it's creativity. Whose idea was it, I wonder, to create a monument out of an actual Soviet tank by simply adding these figures with their pitchforks and their determined faces. On Saturday morning, after a great meeting with the Head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission who was so impressed by Kate that I am hoping I get some credit just for being the one who brought her to town, we set out for Badghis. I have often felt when driving out on road missions that this part of my job feels much more like a mini-vacation. Sure the roads are bone-jangling and there are no public toilets along the 6-7 hour journey (hence the photo of me walking off into the empty distance), but check out this scenery!

We’ve been in Badghis almost a week now and since this post is growing far too long, I’ll just give you a few vignettes. The head of the CID from one remote district bumped into an Afghan colleague of mine after two days in the workshop and told him “I have learned so much. I now know that it is not a crime for a woman to run away from home and I swear to God that I will never again arrest a woman for this reason”. After a guest lecture from our friends in the civilian component of the Spanish PRT (a nurse and a lawyer) on forensic medicine (including the unreliability of virginity tests, for which I give up big respect to my fantastic assistant who had to translate this difficult session) several of the prosecutors asked the nurse if he would come back to give them a more comprehensive workshop on these issues. One night I watched as Kate spent several hours, until 10 o’clock at night, perfecting the design of the completion certificates. She understands that these certificates will be treasured by all participants and will become a feature of their curriculum vitae. She also understood that some colour and good quality card would be considered a sign of the importance of the workshop. Every single moment of the 'introduction to human rights' workshops I ran for our new staff was a gift. They were open to everyone, including the security guards, the drivers, the radio operators, and the cleaners. Along with the pleasure of getting to know them all a bit better I was very grateful for a wonderful illustrated version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights published by our head office in Kabul.

The images are so well conceived and executed that the participants who couldn't read were still able to follow. In fact, one of the my favorite moments was when I directed everyone to the page which set out the right to have an effective remedy for violations of the rights set out in the Declaration and asked the participants what they thought the State was obliged to do based on this right. One of the female cleaners was the first to respond, describing perfectly what she saw in the picture and in doing so giving an excellent answer. Another highlight was when I gave a scenario in which I was monitoring a human rights violation in Qala-e-Naw and asked the participants to tell me everything I was doing wrong. This story caused much amusement, and even the shyest participant (a lovely, gentle security guard who was also illiterate) found the confidence to make a good point about how such monitoring should be conducted. My amazing Human Rights Assistant, R, and I would finish up the two workshops each afternoon and then go off to do our monitoring work – visiting the prison, interviewing victims, meeting with the prosecutors, the Department of Women’s Affairs and eventually the Chief Judge. After one meeting we were walking back to the compound in the falling dusk and I asked R if he was tired. He smiled and told me that he gets tired when he feels we are not making any difference. But if he sees that things have moved forward even one centimetre for one person then he is not tired. I knew exactly what he meant.

Yearning for justice

This young girl's red hair, bold eyebrows and serious look captivated me.

She is the Deputy President of the Provincial Council, and you just watched as she argued passionately with the President of the Council about the need for human rights and justice in Afghanistan. He had suggested that it was time for people in Afghanistan to accept that there had been no human rights in this country for 30 years, that those who had been responsible for abuses of human rights were still around and are not going to go away. He argued that it was time to simply accept this and let it be. He asked: what would make things better anyway? Did she want to see all those responsible for human rights violations executed? Would that make things better? She argued that it was never too late for justice, that she didn’t want to see those responsible killed, instead she wanted them publicly identified, investigated and tried. She wanted a chance for the victims and their families to have their stories told, to have their pain heard and acknowledged. She wanted people to know that those who were responsible for their suffering were not allowed to get away with it without any accountability or punishment. She talked about war crimes tribunals in other countries, about war criminals who had been held accountable for their crimes in other jurisdictions. She talked about global efforts to have Pinochet tried and about the trial of Milosovic. She is obviously intelligent, well informed and committed to justice. She is, quite simply, a woman who you admire, who you would like to get to know better and to work with. She is the kind of woman who can give you hope for this country and a sense of purpose and optimism in your work. So it is incredibly hard when you have to be so careful about what you say in response to her, when you have to carefully select each word to ensure that you are speaking in accordance with your organisation’s official position on the matter. She is referring to the Human Rights Watch report on human rights abuses committed by the Jehadi leaders and factions in Kabul in the 1990’s. She is furious that President Karzai has rejected the report and refused to act on its recommendations to bring those leaders (now holding powerful positions in Karzai’s cabinet and in the Parliament) to trial. You first have to clarify one point - she has mistakenly attributed the HRW report to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. This confusion is proving to be common across the country and is risky for the Commission, so you are careful to point out that the report she is referring to was not produced by the Commission, but rather by an independent NGO called ‘Human Rights Watch’. You explain that AIHRC was involved in the background research for the Action Plan on Peace, Reconciliation and Justice and they did produce a report based on their consultations with thousands of Afghans, that report was “A Call for Justice”. It has been used as the basis for the development of the Action Plan. You remind her that on 10 December 2006, International Human Rights Day, President Karzai launched the Action Plan. You say that this is a very important development, one that the AIHRC and the international community have been pushing for over the past year. You remind her that the plan is comprehensive (i.e. that it does not only deal with accountability but also with victims needs to tell their stories and to see their experiences reflected in shared histories of Afghanistan) and that it is progressive (i.e. it starts with steps like establishing national memorial days and have a series of phases that should happen consequentially). You feel acutely aware that in the face of genuine passionate feeling you are responding with policy. It is good, sound policy and you have no argument with your superiors in Kabul who have developed the policy. But you feel that this woman deserves more from you. You know that the launch of the plan was completely overshadowed by the reaction to the Human Rights Watch press release calling for the prosecution of a number of key figures involved in human rights abuses in the 1990s. Those named in the HRW report and press release have decided to use this as an opportunity to attack the international community and the AIHRC and to put the President in an extremely difficult situation. You are afraid that if this situation escalates it will endanger the implementation of the Action Plan itself, so you feel that the policy you have been given is correct. But in your heart you want to join with her in her passion. Instead you talk calmly and carefully about the Action Plan and ask for ideas about what you and she can do together in the province to promote greater awareness of the plan. You argue that it is the right of people here in Farah to know about the plan and to understand what the plan proposes should happen in Afghanistan. You look her in the eye and tell her that your mandate is to promote implementation of the Action Plan, so although you understand she may be disappointed in some aspects of the plan this is what you have to offer. You look her in the eye and tell her that you do not work in Kabul, that you work in Farah, so although you do not disagree with her suggestions that more needs to be done at the national level to ensure implementation of the plan you are here, not there, and you can only offer to work with her on initiatives to promote the Action Plan here. You watch her face while your interpreter translates your words to her. You see that although she is passionate and ready to fight about these issues, she is not going to fight you. She is going to be gracious to you, she is going to accept your mandate, and accept what you can do rather than railing against what you cannot do. You hear her say that she will prepare a proposal for some dissemination activities in Farah, using radio, televisions and mobile awareness raising workshops for the remote areas. You let out the breath that you have been holding. You take in another deep breath and feel yourself begin to believe that you can find a small way to make your contribution in this place. Background information: Transitional justice is the term used to describe the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society's attempts to address past abuses, ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation after a period of war, conflict and/or oppression. These may include a combination of both judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, individual prosecutions, reparations, truth-seeking, institutional reform, vetting and dismissals. In 2002 the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission was given a mandate, through a decree signed by the Chairman to “undertake national consultations and propose a national strategy for transitional justice and for addressing the abuses of the past.” Throughout 2003 and 2004 AIHRC undertook a widespread consultation, comprised of :

1. the application of a survey, designed to capture quantitative data and test for preferences to 4151 respondents; and
2. the convening of over 200 focus group discussions with over 2000 participants, designed to capture qualitative data and test for perceptions.

The consultation took eight months and covered 32 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces as well as refugee populations in Iran and Pakistan. I highly recommend the resulting report “A Call for Justice” to anyone with an interest in transitional justice in Afghanistan. But I do warn you that it is disturbing to read. A pdf file of the report can be accessed here Based on the findings reported in “A Call for Justice”, the Government of Afghanistan, in cooperation with the AIHRC and UNAMA (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), developed the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice. It was presented and agreed upon at the Hague Conference on Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan on 6-7 June 2005. Although the Government of Afghanistan adopted the plan in early 2006 the President did not formally launch it until 10 December 2006. Where do I fit into this? Part of my job description is to promote and support the implementation of this Action Plan – by raising awareness of the plan amongst the general public, the media, and local authorities. Some of the Afghan people with whom I discuss this plan want more than the plan offers – more immediate judicial action to bring violators to account, for example, where the action plan proposes more progressive actions starting with memorials and the development of shared historical narratives.

I feel deep sympathy for those victims of gross human rights violations who want immediate justice – but I also trust the wisdom of those people who have developed this plan, taking into account the current political and security environment in Afghanistan. Essentially, although my heart longs to meet these cries for justice with the response that they yearn for, my head tells me that people who know so much more than me have so carefully mapped out this path, and that we need to follow it step by step.

A blessing for the New Year

I received a comment on my blog from a woman who seems to understand some of the challenges I'm facing here in Afghanistan, and while exploring her blog I found this inspiring post and this wonderful Fransican blessing: May God bless you with discomfort At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships So that you may live deep within your heart May God bless you with anger At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace May God bless you with tears To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war, So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and Turn their pain into joy And may God bless you with enough foolishness To believe that you can make a difference in the world So that you can do what others claim cannot be done To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Come sit in this circle...

I love this photo of two tribal elders talking at a meeting I went to in Paktia, South East, Afghanistan. I started this blog as a way to tell my friends and family in New Zealand what I was getting up to here in Afghanistan, and to share photos that are sometimes difficult to email from here. But I discovered a whole world of blogs, and amongst that big wide world I discovered some women who inspire me to search for more creative and authentic ways to live my life. I’ve mostly just been visiting them for inspiration and warmth when life here is too lonely, too harsh, or just too constrained. But very recently, inspired by Rumi’s poem “There is a community of the spirit” I started making tentative moves towards these women. I left a comment here and there. Guess what? They responded! I feel like a schoolgirl who shyly asked if she could sit at the table with the girls who were laughing and telling great stories only to find they were ready to slide along and make room for her. Anyway, Susanna - whose photographs are really beautiful and whose interest in my work was humbling and touching - asked me a few questions in an email. She probably had no idea what she was triggering. Her first question was perfectly innocent - How did you get started? But this is a question that has a short and a long answer. I’ve decided to go for the long answer this time. At the moment I’m keeping company with some questions about why I am here and whether this is really the kind of life I want. I am also (with some excitement and anticipation) entering a process of imaging how I might want my life to be different, so this seems as good an opportunity as any to reflect on what brought me here. I always had a strong interest in justice, including in the sense of social justice. My parents are committed Christians who believe in social justice and social service. They were on mission to Papua New Guinea when I was a small child. Back home in New Zealand my father gives a lot of his time to a charitable organisation focused on prisoners and their families. My mother is a teacher specialized in children with learning disabilities, specifically dyslexia. They live their lives with integrity, generosity, kindness and a sense of justice. As a child I sometimes got in trouble at school for confronting teachers if I felt they had dealt with a fellow student unjustly. I think I was on the right track about the injustice, but I had a lot to learn about constructive ways to address that injustice. So I studied law, focusing my honours thesis on international human rights law. But my first job out of law school was with a big corporate firm in New Zealand where I worked on the ‘large scale litigation’ team. One of my first cases was between our client (Coca Cola) and the largest brewery in New Zealand over sale of a bottling plant. I paid off my student debts and learned a lot about legal practice and professional standards, but never planned to make a career in corporate law. I had my first “life crisis” at the ripe age of 24 years. I had married at twenty, to a wonderful man who I still love and admire. Less than four years later my husband and I separated and I was left wondering why following what I thought were the ‘rules’ hadn’t worked. I had a crisis in faith, quit the law firm, packed up and went backpacking around East Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East for nearly 10 months. As well as starting over again from the foundations of my belief system and discovering that I could cope on my own with much more difficult situations than I would have predicted, I also saw injustice first-hand. Perhaps the most shocking to me, given the quite different view of Israel I had grown up with, were the injustices I witnessed in the Israeli-occupation in the Palestinian territories. More on this later. Back in New Zealand, several years passed during which I studied again. During this time I also worked as a “story-teller” for The Fairy Shop (now my sister’s business) and rediscovered a sense of fun, magic, intellectual curiosity and creativity. This was a pretty fantastic time in my life, but after a few years I hit another “crisis”. I was working full-time and at the same time trying to get going on my thesis, looking at the human rights impacts of World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes. I had just broken up with my first post-divorce boyfriend, and had recently been through the harrowing experience of being a friend and housemate to a woman with anorexia. Our other housemate responded by developing her own eating disorder. I had to sit on my bed every night repeating to myself that I wasn’t fat, that food was good and healthy. I can tell you that nothing spoils your appetite like having two excruciatingly thin women stand over you while you cook and eat, exclaiming how good it looks but refusing to eat the food themselves. Eventually even our cat stopped eating! I found my way out of this painful time thanks to the support of some very dear friends and two wonderful advisors. One was a fantastic therapist who, amongst other things, helped me free myself from my fear that ‘quitting’ the master’s programme would mean failing. The other was my academic supervisor, Paul Hunt, who saw my need to get out and do the work that I felt drawn to. He found me a job opportunity in the Gaza Strip. I applied and within a few weeks I was winging my way to York for a job interview with the British NGO who was funding the position, a legal advisor and capacity-building role with a Palestinian human rights organization. I got the job and left almost immediately for Gaza. I lived for an amazing 18 months in Gaza, from May 1999 until the end of 2000. More on this time in future posts. But it is fair to say that my time in Gaza changed my life profoundly and led me to the place I am in now. During the time I lived in Gaza I made the most amazing friends (Palestinian, Israeli and international), witnessed horrors and wonders, cried and raged and laughed and danced. I learned what may be one of the most important lessons of my life, what it feels like to be the ‘outsider’ in a culture which is deeply foreign to your own. I got a taste of how it feels to be mistreated by men in uniform with guns. I will never again be the person I was before I lived in Gaza and I still surprise myself by the strength of my feelings about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I sometimes wonder whether I’ve responded to the impact that feeling the conflict and injustice so deeply while I was in Gaza seems to have had on me by holding much more of myself back here, and to a lesser degree also when I was in Timor-Leste. Maybe that’s okay, perhaps I’ve learned how to care enough – but not too much… Wow, that sounds very odd to me. What does it mean to care “enough”? I’m going to go away and think about it more. In coming posts: great stories from Gaza, and how I got from Palestine to Afghanistan. Also answers to Susanna’s other questions: What is life like for you in Afghanistan? and What is it like for you as a Western woman in Afghanistan? But one of her questions can be answered in one paragraph – she asked: “Do you get to go home very often?” – the answer is twice this year, the first time in the middle of the Southern winter,

the second time just recently, to my sister’s wedding,

This year I also had a holiday in Thailand with my boyfriend, a visit to my lovely friend Imogen while she was working on the earthquake response in Pakistan,

and a visit to my boyfriend’s hometown, Portland, Oregon – which I absolutely loved and thought was a bit like home (New Zealand).

Yes, I know I get to travel much more than most people and I do know how lucky I am for that. It’s part of the trade-off for not being able to go for my runs outside, wear a skirt in public, read the paper, meet my friends for coffee or go to the cinema.

Maybe we can make a difference

This week, on Monday, UNAMA released a report on the civilian causalities from a recent incident in which British soldiers fired shots after an attack on their convoy. These situations are complex, and the application of international humanitarian law is not always straightforward, but Afghan citizens have been saying recently that they find it a bit rich for Western nations to issue reports on human rights violations in Afghanistan when there are no reports being issued on the civilian casualties caused by the ISAF/NATO forces. So this report is important. It has been welcomed by residents in Kandahar. Credible, impartial monitoring of the impact on civilians of armed conflict in Afghanistan is essential to the success of our shared goal: stabilization and future development of the country. Afghan NGOs and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission have reported on these types of incidents in the past and the UN has released statements expressing concern at reports of large civilian casualties but this is the first official UN report on civilian causalities based on investigation of a specific incident It includes findings and recommendations and it is intended to the first of many. Friends of mine, both Afghan and international, worked hard on this report and I’m proud of their work. This report reminds me what good human rights monitoring can do, and it inspires me to do my little part as well as I can. I’ve been discouraged in my work this week, so this was just the motivator I needed.

Off on mission again

I'm off again today, this time to Farah. I haven't been to Farah yet because the security situation there has been a bit unpredictable. So I'm looking forward to seeing something new.

I'll be taking with me a box of illustrated editions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Dari and Pashtu, and a big roll of posters with human rights messages. These were actually the materials for our human rights day event in Badghis last Sunday, but they didn't arrive in time (they got here yesterday, a week late). So I'm taking them to Farah. I might try to visit some schools, and give booklets and posters to each classroom.

But the main reason for the mission is to carry on with the monitoring of prisons and detention centres. It will be interesting to see what the situation is in a province which is so isolated, and unlikely to have been very much influenced by changes in the justice system.

The picture is from an earlier mission and is of a police investigator telling one of my associates why he needs to beat and torture all the suspects they arrest...

All going well I'll be back before the weekend, I'm very hopeful that we won't get stuck in Farah for Christmas!

Torture and other interesting topics for conversation

Today I had a long conversation with the District Chief of Police and the Head of the Criminal Investigation Department in Qades District, Badghis. Their frankness was at once refreshing, disarming and a little disturbing. I introduced myself as the Human Rights Officer for the province, and explained that I was in town to do research and monitoring of the legality of detention in their police lock up and the district prison. They kicked off the discussion by telling me that although they know the rules and regulations regarding human rights, they are not able to follow them because the only way they can get the criminals in their district to confess is to beat and torture them. In the end we agreed to disagree on this point, but we were certainly all in agreement that it was good for them to be honest with me so that my report could be accurate and, hopefully, encourage the donors who will be reading it to continue to support the professionalisation of the Afghan National Police. After interveiwing all the detainees in the police cells and the district jail (which turned out to be the same place) I met the District Prosecutor to verify a number of apparent irregularities in the detainees cases. It was an interesting discussion. Where one detainee had told me that he had been in the prison for seven months and had not appeared before a court or been convicted, the prosecutor insisted that this prisoner had been arrested only a month prior and had been tried, convicted and sentenced to seven months imprisonment. Perhaps the prisoner misunderstood my question and told me his sentence when I asked how long he had been in the prison. With the various language and communication barriers it sometimes feels impossible to be absolutely certain of meaning. The prosecutor and I also had a disagreement as to whether it was a crime under Afghan law for a woman to run away from her home. A young woman had recently been detained for a week while under investigation for this alleged crime, in the end the prosecutor decided she had been kidnapped, but he was insistent that he had been legally entitled to arrest and detain her while she as investigated for the alleged crime. In the end I dropped the debate, I will leave that one to my friend Kathryn who I´ve got coming up to this remote province from Kabul in January or February. Kathryn trains the prosecutors in Kabul on gender and criminal justice, so she´s much better placed than I am to have a debate about the provisions of Afghan law in this regard. The woman had been released in any case, so I felt less compelled to get a resolution on the point today. It makes for a long day, after the bone-rattling drive for several hours we were sitting in cold corners of the prison yard for hours so that our interviews with the detainees and prisoners could be relatively private. Of course they are stuck there all the time, so it seems horrible to complain about just a few hours. But I will have to get out the yoga mat again tonight and stretch out my stiff limbs. I´ve been managing a good 40 minutes every morning since I got up here and I think it helps with the physical and mental impact of this kind of work. This morning I tried out my new meditation guide on the iPod, but I only lasted 15 out of the 38 minutes before I gave in to the voices and distractions. I´ll have to build up to that one. Once again I have photos, which will be posted as soon as I get back to Herat. Tonight I´m meeting the American police mentor team, who are working with the Afghan National Police in the province. I´m keen to talk about what I was told today and to find out whether they have any plans for training on investigation techniques, anything other than laying the suspect out on the ground and beating him with large wooden sticks would be an improvement so I´m guessing even the Americans will be able to help with this. Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with the Provincial Chief Prosecutor, this will be my first meeting with him because he is new and has replaced the chap I met last time I was up here. I may have to win him over to the plan for the gender and criminal justice workshop, so I´m hoping to make a good first connection. Then it´s on the road and back to Herat, where my own bed and bathroom are waiting for me. I just found out tonight that my colleague is being sent to New York for two months so I have to somehow fit all of her urgent work into my workplan for the coming few months. It was always going to be a busy little time, but now it is threatening to be ridiculous. I´ll have to pull out my best prioritisation and planning skills to get through this lot in one piece. But first there is the most important task of getting a Christmas tree this weekend! Update: After my slightly snide comment about the American police trainers, they just bought me pizza and a coke, which was very kind. Of course I would have preferred a glass of red wine, which was available at the Spanish PRT bar, but since the American military are prohibited from drinking alcohol while in an active theatre of war, i.e. Afghanistan, it seemed impolite to ask for a wine in place of the coke that they were all drinking. But now I´m off to have my second dinner with the Spanish guys, at least to have a glass of wine!

Impact of conflict on women and children - Part II

Yesterday I went on mission again, this time to the isolated province of Ghor. I had a series of meetings with provincial government officials, including the Governor and the Chief Prosecutor, and with the Commander of the Provincial Reconstruction team (the military team responsible for security and reconstruction, in this case led by the Lithuaniuns with contingents from Iceland, Denmark and Croatia). The flight to Chegcharan, the provincial capital, is amazingly scenic with seemingly endless stretches of desertous and mountainous terrain revealing how beautiful and varied a limited palette of brown can be. Now that the mountians are covered in snow it is even more striking. But all that stark beauty is the result of drought and under-development so when you land the picture shifts from impressive beauty to heart-breaking poverty and deprivation. Those stunning white peaks, in reality, mean the beginning of the harsh winter which will cut off some of the more remote districts from the provincial centre. If winterization and drought relief assistance hasn't already reached people in those districts it could be prevented from getting there by the next snow fall. But on this trip my focus was not on economic and social rights, I was following up on a "jihad against corruption" which has been launched by the Attorney General of Afghanistan. The provincial prosecutor has been directed to begin investigations into a variety of allegations against local officials and local illegal armed commanders. He asked for my help, and this is the second time I've visited him to try and advise him on how to go about this process without putting himself or his staff into unecessary danger. This time he was particularly disconsolate and I think I will need to go more often and stay longer if I am going to be of real help to him. Thank goodness for the friendly Lithuanians, I'll plan a longer stay in January and look forward to more "opps tra la la". But the strongest impression left with me from this visit was of a man who came to me at the end of my time at the Prosecutor's office appealing for my help to recover his daughter who was allegedly kidnapped by a local commander several years ago when she was 5 years old. Again, I was struck by the degree to which women and children in Afghanistan are suffering as a result of conflicts which are led by men. Girl children suffer perhaps the most of all. This man stood in front of me in tears, having thrown off his turban to show me his shaven head in a gesture of deep despair. I asked the Chief Prosecutor what he had done to investigate the case, he told me that he had written to the Commander concerned but, not surprisingly, had recieved no repsonse. He told me that the police could not do anything etiher. I took the documents about the case from the distraught father and left with a heavy heart. I have no idea where this girl is now, nor what condition she is in. I will make every effort I can to locate her and use what little influence I have to return her to her family, but it is not a case that I can feel very optimistic about. In a meeting recently to discuss reconciliation efforts between two tribes in conflict I raised the issues of the need to involve women and children in reconciliation processes. As it goes here traditionally, the reconciliation processes involve only men, and only relatively powerful and influential men at that. The women and children, who obviously experience violent conflict in very different ways to the men, are never heard. Their voices and their experiences are absent from the 'mediation table'. I'm convinced that as long as those voices and those perspectives are not included in the peace building process, the process will not be successful. But when I raised this issue, I was told that the possibility simply does not exist. I won't give up, at the very least there are possibilities to involve women and children in the next stage of peace building, which will be the reconstruction and development projects that will hopefully be introduced into these divided communities. But I feel as though this point is so obvious that I can't believe others really expect a "peace process" dominated by men to work. Those men are weighing up different options, considering acceptable and unacceptable trade-offs. Surely it doesn't take an expert in conflict resolution to work out that what may be an acceptable trade-off to them might not be to the women and children who suffer as a direct result.

Impact of conflict on women and children - Part I

So this week I've had no time to feel sorry for myself, being this busy actually working on human rights issues is a great antidote for the blues. In case I needed any more inspiration, check out this little guy who managed to find a grin for me despite the pretty horrrific experiences he has recently been through and the really depressing conditions he is now living in.

Yesterday I made a mission to assess the human rights impact of recent conflict in an area which I won't name - just to be certain that the stories I tell here and the pictures I share don't put the people involved in any danger. I met mostly women and children who have not only been directly affected by the violence, facing armed men in their homes and seeing their fathers, brothers and husbands killed, but who are also now suffering as a result of having fled their home villages. They all reported that they still felt afraid of reprisals, so although I know you are all friends I'd rather be a bit over cautious.

As well as the kids, I was really impressed by fortitude of the women who bear the brunt of so much of the destruction. I met one 36 year old woman with 9 children (eldest daughter 20 years old, youngest baby breast-feeding as we talked). Her son had been killed in one ambush and then her husband (who was paralyzed from the waist down) was killed when the armed men from the other faction attacked their house two weeks ago. The eldest daughter was shot twice in the arm while she tried to protect her disabled father from the gunmen. We sat in the filthy room she and her children have been living in since they fled their village the night of the fighting, when her house was also looted, burned and shelled.

Anyway - things are a bit frantic and I'm off on another mission to another province tomorrow so this post will be brief.

Good advice and real work

So, the bromazepam helped me sleep well last night, but an even better remedy came along this afternoon in the form of an invitation to sit on the couch, drink red wine and watch movies from my fellow Herat blogger and friend along with some very good advice (which she says comes from World Food Program booklet on stress management for people working in these kind of missions). The advice was:

"accepting our feelings a little more,

and judging them a little less,

is a great stress reducer".

I feel the most incredible sense of relief just reading those words. Of course it was terrible timing for me to suddenly be hit by this overwhelm, this insomnia, this rollercoaster of emotion just as Mac arrived in town. But spending so much time hating myself for not being able to control that wasn't getting me anywhere.

So - back to the real work, which is a great way to distract myself from these emotional maelstroms. Today I've been writing up the report of a meeting of different groups (government departments, UN agencies and NGOs) who are interested in coming up with a cooperative approach to the problem of hundreds of children who are working at the border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran.

It was a good, productive meeting and I really enjoyed the healthy debate between the pragmatists (who accept that the children are going to work and want to concentrate on their health and safety) and those who want to focus more on the fundamental child rights issues (most importantly their right to an education). I enjoyed watching people come up with compromises and creative solutions that, hopefully, will take all these different perspectives into account.

At the end of the meeting I was asked to write up the report of the outcomes of the meeting since, as the participants pointed out that my Language Assistant and I had done such a great job of the previous report (which reported on the findings of our joint survey of the children working at the border). But I told them all that I know the real reason they asked us to do the report is because it's the only thing we are any good at - writing reports. Well, it is not far from the truth, it got a good laugh, and for once I felt good about it!

In other developments today, I'm making prgress towards getting a fabulous Canadian lawyer (one of the first people I met in Kabul and a very good friend) out to one of the remote provinces in our region to run a three day long training course for prosectuors. The course is going to be on the basics of criminal justice, illustrated by cases involving women! It's an exciting project for me, and the fact that I get to work with a good friend just adds to the fun.

We had some wobbles getting the project off the ground, but now everyone is happy for us to go ahead and I'm feeling very excited about it. I'm planning to have it happen around 10 December - Human Rights Day, so that I can use it as a key event to focus celebrations of human rights in the province with a focus on rule of law and women's rights (not the official theme for this year but certainly amongst the most commonly cited issues of concern to people on the ground.

So things are ticking along and despite insomnia and anxiety and hormone related emotional meltdowns, I think I can chalk this week up as a good one.

Tommorrow is Friday, which means time for my list of reasons to be happy, so I'll make my morning soy latte wait for inspiration to strike. Til then.