Report - United States Department of Defense

UNCLASSIFIED
Society (I-PACS); the Ministry of Women’s Affairs Organizational Restructuring and
Empowerment (MORE) program; the PROMOTE program; and the U.S. Embassy Kabul Public
Affairs grants. The PROMOTE program will focus on increasing women’s access to leadership
positions in social, economic and political sectors as well as providing women with a specially
designed Women’s Leadership Development program. During the conference, the USG and key
international community allies underscored that the protection of human rights of women and the
gains women have made is a priority as the transition process moves forward. The TMAF
includes several indicators pertaining to the rights of women, including the implementation of
the EVAW and the National Action Plan for Women (NAPWA).
Ensuring women’s civic and political participation, as well as enhancing women’s status and
equality, is dependent on an effective rule of law, which allows women to rely on both the
informal and formal sectors to provide security and access to justice as well as raise awareness of
and implement existing Afghan laws protecting their constitutional rights, such as EVAW. There
are now approximately 150 female judges, up from 50 in 2003, and the Afghan Association of
Women Judges was re-launched in 2012. Civil society organizations and female Afghan leaders
continue to advocate for the appointment of a qualified female candidate on the Supreme Court,
to no avail. Achieving greater equality within Afghanistan relies on the meaningful inclusion of
Afghan women in every phase of the justice system – as police, prosecutors, defense attorneys,
and judges, civil and family law attorneys, as litigants and as Islamic law scholars.
Although DOS and USAID administer the majority of women’s initiatives, DoD also oversees
several programs focusing on women. These programs include assistance to the Department of
Women’s Affairs in Kandahar and the District Development Assembly for Women’s Affairs in
Parwan District. Additionally, coalition forces continue to incorporate Female Engagement
Teams with general purpose forces on patrol in order to engage women and children of local
communities in open communication, thus facilitating civil-military interactions and building
trust, cooperation, and security. Similarly, U.S. SOF employs U.S. Cultural Support Teams
(CSTs) that provide an enduring female engagement capability in support of special operations
and VSO/ALP expansion.
USAID plays a leading role in implementing the USG’s civilian strategy for assistance to women
in Afghanistan in the areas of health, education, economic development, access to justice and
political empowerment, and it plays a supporting role in implementing the strategy in the area of
security. All USAID programs undergo gender analysis to attribute primary and secondary
benefits to gender. USAID has completed 27 gender analyses thus far.
The USG is committed to removing constraints on women’s potential, viewing their
contributions to Afghan society as essential. USG policy supports the principles of equality for
men and women as encapsulated in the Afghan constitution; Afghanistan National Development
Strategy (ANDS) and the National Action Plan for Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA).
Furthermore, the USG supports GIRoA’s implementation of the Bonn Agreement, UN
Resolution 1325, and the EVAW Law.
ISAF has different Gender Advisers (GA), Gender Field Advisers (GFA) and Gender Focal
Points (GFP):
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