Since September 2020, talks have been ongoing between officials from the Afghan state and the Taliban in Doha, and scholars and activists urge the necessity of including women in these peace negotiations.
In 2000, female peacebuilders were the inspiration behind UN Security Council Resoultion 1325, which for the first time called for the inclusion of women in matters of war prevention and peacebuilding. This recognised that the inclusion of women in peace processes has a higher likelihood of bringing about sustainable and inclusive peace.
The lack of substantial female input at this strategic moment of transition for Afghanistan will bring about results that oppose with the UN goals for women, peace, and security agenda.
PEACE NEGOTIATIONS AS A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY FOR GENDERED STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION
As the peace agreements in Doha continue, efforts to accommodate more women should not be merely superficial. Instead, international and regional actors should cooperate and create partnerships to ensure that different groups of women benefit from structural changes achieved as a result of peace. According to UN Women, female participation in current talks has so far been symbolic at best. There needs to be, therefore, a greater emphasis on the inclusion of women in the negotiations, and achieving favourable outcomes for the women of Afghanistan.
First and foremost, as the United Nations urged in a 2019 report, women's rights must not be sacrificed during the political deal-making in Afghanistan. It is evident that during four decades of conflict, the fundamental human rights of Afghan women have been violated by the Taliban and it is naive to presume that this suffering can be righted overnight. However, as Amnesty International has urged, respect for female fundamental rights must not be sacrificed to obtain a peace agreement. It also emphasises that any peace deal must not only protect the gains already made but should also create a commitment to further advancing the rights of Afghan women.
Secondly, the participation of Afghan women should not be confined to pre-negotiation interventions; active and effective participation of women is needed in the formal peace negotiations. Research by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit indicates that women are mostly unhappy with the level of participation in national peace efforts, past and current. At the village, district, and provincial level, their roles have been limited to informal local councils. This new round of peace negotiations should reflect women’s genuine role in all of the levels of the negotiations.
Last but not least, inclusive peace is attainable only under the condition that not only the group of elite women, but also marginalized women from different ethnicities, races and social backgrounds get the chance of participation in this deal. Intersectionality is often neglected in addressing women's rights issues, despite sustainable peace dependent on a coalition of broad groups within Afghanistan.
FEMALE PEACEBUILDERS: CONSISTENT RECOGNITION AND PROTECTION
It is vital that Afghan women be recognised as peacebuilders at different levels including international, regional, and local. This is of significant importance because too often women are engaged in fundamental work but unaware of their crucial role in peacebuilding. For many, it is assumed that peace is inherently tied to militarised security and thus a matter of state actors and politicians alone. The recognition of Afghan women in current peacebuilding efforts is of significant importance since it will empower them to move forward for the realisation of inclusive, sustainable peace.
Moreover, the security of Afghan female peacebuilders should be guaranteed so that women from all groups of the society can attend peace negotiations without concern over potential threats to their physical and mental integrity. These women should not lose their independence and autonomy due to being part of peace negotiations. There is support in research that the security of women is a better predictor of stability than women’s inclusion. Dangers threatening female peacebuilders impede women from effectively participating, and attention should be paid to travel visa restrictions which has been one of the most common issues for peacebuilders in the current peace negotiations.
SUSTAINABLE FUNDING FOR SUSTAINABLE GENDER-INCLUSIVE PEACE
Zarqa Yaftali, an Afghan female peacebuilder highlights that donors often opt for short-term project support, yet the women in Afghanistan need longer-term collaborations to “grow stronger”.
If Afghan women do not get sufficient long-lasting funds from independent donors, it is impossible to participate in peace negotiations and the subsequent period while preserving their autonomy. Of course, sustainable funding does not mean dedicating huge funds to this purpose. It means instead that redistribution of funds should happen in a way that female peacebuilders can seize this window of opportunity to move forward resiliently for the protection and promotion of Afghan women's rights. It is vital that donors attain context-specific knowledge through the cooperation with civil society organizations. As a result, donors would be able to support programs which are align with the local women’s needs rather than reliance on costly mechanisms that are alien to the specific needs of local women. Donors should also be mindful of the fact that their investments should include both pre- and post-peace negotiation gender-sensitive projects and strategies which will result in the ability to effect transformative change to the current patriarchal structures.
FOLLOW UP MECHANISMS
Inclusion of women in peace negotiations for countries transitioning from violence to stability is integral to inclusive results. The question, however, remains over what challenges must be addressed so that structural gender-based transformation can be enacted. It is vital to learn from peace processes in other countries, which demonstrate the necessity of having mechanisms in place to implement for gender equality. To this end, the participation of Afghan women in the current peace negotiations should also include their active role in the post-peace negotiations. Peace negotiations without proper gender-sensitive implementation and monitoring mechanisms cannot guarantee the non-recurrence of women's suppression. National action plans based on UNSCR 1325 could provide an invaluable policy framework. However, it is also necessary to provide local and indigenous women with accessible translations so that every woman can become familiar with the newly established frameworks and become agents of peace and women's rights. The mere fact that Afghanistan has a National Action Plan regarding UNSCR 1325 is not going to bring any practical transformation to the current gender-blind policies, and it is now the role of women peacebuilders to call for the creation of monitoring mechanisms so that the government of Afghanistan provide the civil society with regular reports and analysis regarding the progress that it has made on the implementation of National Action Plan.
While ongoing peace negotiations in Afghanistan are a significant stage for the transition of the country to stability and democracy, the international as well as the local community must ensure that female contributions in different stages of the negotiations are based on genuine efforts that reflect the needs and concerns of women from all backgrounds. Negotiating parties must view women’s rights as an integral part of a sustainable inclusive peace. In fact, compromising women’s human rights for the achievement of peace would perpetuate the cycle of gender-based violations of human rights that will impede the realisation of democracy for the country.
Ghazal is a recent graduate from Geneva Academy of IHL and Human Rights in the field of transitional justice and she also holds an LL.M in international human rights law. She has worked with international organizations like UNRWA as a student researcher and Her research interests lie in women empowerment in post-conflict situations, International criminal justice, and women, peace and security agenda.