Almost 25 years of war left behind an almost entirely devastated Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, a reconstruction process set in, raising hope for a better future. However, the road to this better future is sometimes rocky. Particularly women and girls suffer from the current situation, since the Afghan society is and remains an extremly patriarchal society and violence against women is still a daily occurrence.
medica mondiale has been implementing several projects to support Afghan women and girls since 2002. Our staff on site offer psychosocial and medical care and provide legal assistance. It is our aim to help Afghan women and girls to overcome their traumatic experience while promoting the rights of women in Afghan society. Project activities mainly take place in the cties of Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, as well as in some of the neighbouring provinces.
Psychosocial Care and Further Training
Staff members of medica mondiale Afghanistan are represented in six districts of Kabul, offering individual and group counselling for women who suffer from the mental or physical consequences of sexualised and other forms of violence. Since there are hardly any contact points for traumatised women in Afghanistan, the demand for counselling services is high. Furthermore, there is a lack of qualified personnel with specific training in providing care for survivors of sexualised violence. For this reason, medica mondiale Afghanistan continually offers training programmes for female professionals who work in medical and psychosocial professions. Our objective: To provide well-founded counselling training to female professionals looking after women who have to cope with rape and other types of violence as part of their daily lives.
Training and Networking of Female Medical Staff
Afghan women – particularly those patients who have experienced violence – can not find adequate medical care in Afghan health care centres. Many women only turn to a doctor once they encounter severe health problems as a consequence of violence. This is why medica mondiale Afghanistan has been introducing a trauma sensitive approach to health care personnel in state-run Afghan hospitals since 2002. Since 2006, Afghan employees in state-run hospitals undergo systematic training in trauma and gender sensitive care of female patients. The participants of these training courses have also set up a network to lobby for structural improvements in medical care provided to women and girls.
Legal Assistance for Afghan Women and Girls
The Afghan constitution of 2004 stipulates the equality of men and women. However, the prevailing jurisdiction is still characterised by the Islamic jurisdiction based on the conservative interpretation of the Sharia und traditional Pashtun law, as is particularly the case in the countryside. In everyday life, it is completely unpredicatable on which grounds jurisdiction is applied.
Since 2003, 14 female lawyers have participated in training courses of medica mondiale Afghanistan to become criminal defence lawyers. They work in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif and fight for detained women to be granted fair proceedings, while providing general legal advice in matters of civil law such as divorce. Since the beginning of the project, approximately 2,250 women were defended by these female lawyers.
Human Rights Are Women’s Right, too!
The central political call of medica mondiale Afghanistan: To enforce the statutory rights of women in every day life. The status of Afghan women is still determined by traditional rules of behaviour – and not by the equal status of men and women as enshrined in the new Constitution. In co-operation with national and international women’s rights and human rights organisations, medica mondiale Afghanistan wants to put an end to the unlawful detention of women due to so-called moral crimes. Furthermore, we aim to prevent suicide of Afghan women by self-immolation and avoid forced and child marriages.
