Afghanistan: Online courses to counter lack of rights
Since the Taliban seized power in Summer 2021, female lawyers, judges and prosecutors have been threatened, attacked and murdered. The Taliban are doing everything they can to ensure these female legal professionals are the last of their generation: since December 2022, female students are no longer permitted to attend lectures.
The Women for Justice Organisation (WJO) has been working for years to ensure that women in Afghanistan gain access to legal support. Only a few weeks after the Taliban locked the doors to the universities for women, in February 2023 staff at the WJO launched their six-month intensive course “Next Generation”. It offers a new generation of legal professionals the possibility of continuing their studies, in spite of the education bans, and to work to uphold the rights of survivors of sexualised violence.
New hope for Afghan women
The WJO is instructing 25 female law students how they can make use of existing laws to fight for justice for women. They practice putting forward arguments during negotiations and learn how to cope with stress. The lesson plans include civil and family law, as well as topics exploring gender stereotypes and their impacts on society. Additionally, the young women participate in workshops on leadership skills, self-empowerment and self-awareness. For security reasons, these training courses take place online.
Most of the participants come from poor families. Their existential worries and the restrictions of the Taliban mean the 20-24-year-old students are suffering from considerable stress and psychological pressure. But they refuse to be discouraged. Not by the prohibitions from the Taliban. Not by the frequent power cuts, which make it difficult to take part in the online trainings or the related discussions via messaging services. As one of them puts it:
"This program has given me new hope and the motivation to start again, instead of giving up out of sheer desperation."
Training as a psychosocial counsellor
Ten participants in the Next Generation course are supplementing the online training with practical sessions. As WJO scholarship students they are accompanying the WJO team for eleven months as they work in the health centres and clinics in Kabul, where our partner organisation offers legal assistance and psychosocial support to women affected by violence. For cases of conflict resolution, the WJO team relies on family mediation. Their staff meet the female family members and then also involve the fathers, brothers and sons in the process – but by telephone. At the end of their training, the scholarship students graduate as certified psychosocial counsellors.
„In the current situation in Afghanistan, which is nothing but despair and hopelessness, this program (…) is like the light in the height of darkness."
Before the Taliban took power in 2021, Afghanistan had one of the world’s highest rates of violence against women and girls. Since then, gender-based violence has only increased. Several studies show how survivors who have no access to justice suffer a high degree of psychosocial problems. This is something the WJO team and the young law students refuse to accept. They have declared war on the lack of rights for Afghan women.
“Our program has become a source of hope for the participants. It motivates them to see that knowledge can never be ‘locked up’ or taken away. It never really disappears.”
