Afghan Peace and Democracy Act Two days Workshop On “ Strengthening of Women Rights in the new Afghan Constitution and Peace building Process”

Kabul March 17-18,2004

Afghan Peace and Democracy Act (APDA) with collaboration of Training of Human Rights Activists (For Afghan Women) has organized two days training workshop for Afghan women on the following topics:

1. Women Rights in the new Afghan Constitution;
2. Role of Afghan Women in the peace building process.

Resource persons for the first topic were from Afghanistan Lawyers Union and for the second topic from the Sanayee Development Organization (SDF).

In this workshop 32 persons have participated. Participants were from different women organizations, women community activists and girls schools teachers.

The Chair of Lawyers Union was the first resource person who conducted the first day training according to the topic with relevancy and has explained the advantages of new Afghan Constitution in the light of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the important role of Afghan women for the expansion of the writ of the Afghan state over all country. Then all the participants were divided in four groups according to the following topics:

1. The state responsibility regarding the socio-political empowerment of Afghan women in the light of new constitution;
2. How to eradicate the traditional and cultural hurdles and obstacles on the way for inclusion and participation of Afghan women in social, political, economical and cultural life;
3. How to expand the participation of Afghan women in the coming election of Afghanistan;
4. The role of civil society organizations for the socio-political empowerment of Afghan women.

The participants of the groups worked according to the topics and the moderators of the groups have delivered their speeches regarding their topics. Other participants made their questions and had debated accordingly.

On the second day of the workshop resource persons Mr. A.Kazimyar (Chair of the Peace building Unit of SDF) and Ms. Baluch resource person from the same unit conducted the workshop. The resource persons from SDF have very strong command on the given topics and the methodology of their training was very good and interesting for the trainees. The trainees took active participation in the workshop and showed great interest in the workshop topics. Each item of the workshop was explained verbally, with pictures and projections, which provided grounds for better understanding.

On behalf of APDA I would like to thank all the participants and the resource persons for their great contribution in the filed of Afghan women awareness rising and the capacity building of APDA new members.

Regards,

Sarwar Mamound
Coordinator APDA

Author: Sarwar Mamound