UNITAR
The Special Needs of Women
and Children in Conflict
UNAMA
Kabul, 18-19, 23-24 & 26-27 May 2004
Herat, 31 May-1 June 2004
Kunduz, 7-8 June 2004
Summary
In May and June 2004, five largely identical two-day training courses on the special needs of women and children in conflict and post-conflict situations were organized by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The seminars were held in Kabul (18/19, 23/24 and 26/27 May), Herat (31 May/1 June) and Kunduz (7/8 June).The evaluations and recommendations in this report are based on UNITAR’s observations during the seminars and, in particular, on oral and written comments received from the lecturers and the participants, who were encouraged to give feedback to UNITAR throughout the courses and to complete a detailed evaluation questionnaire at the end of each seminar.
The full text of this evaluation report (including statistics) can be downloaded here.
Project Framework
The seminars were part of UNITAR’s Training Programme for Civilian Personnel in Peacekeeping Operations on the Special Needs of Women and Children in Conflict, which was initially developed as a three-year initiative by UNITAR in 2001 and successfully launched with two seminars for UNMIBH in Sarajevo in December 2001. Each year, UNITAR organizes training courses for civilian personnel of two or three peacekeeping operations. UNMEE (Ethiopia/Eritrea), MONUC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), UNMIK (Kosovo) and UNMISET (East Timor) are four other missions that have already received training.The courses are designed to provide civilian personnel of peacekeeping operations with tailor-made training on the special needs of women and children in order to enhance the professional preparedness of civilian peacekeeping staff who deal with societies in and after conflict. The training familiarizes the participants with the specific needs, human rights, potentials and situations of women and children during armed conflict, repatriation, resettlement, reintegration, post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building.
This training programme is being funded by the Swiss government through the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (an international foundation created under the framework of Swiss participation in the Partnership for Peace) and by the United Nations Foundation (UNF), through the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP).
Purposes of the Seminars
The purposes of the seminars were to:
Familiarize peacekeeping staff with the specific needs of women and children during and after armed conflict;
Although UNAMA officials loved to stress ad nauseam that their operation was not a “peacekeeping” mission, it certainly “felt” like one, not least due to its considerable size, which bears no resemblance to the tiny proportions of most peace-building missions. The messages conveyed in the UNITAR training were thus as relevant to UNAMA as they are to peacekeeping operations.
Participation
In total, 122 participants attended the five courses. 53% of them were women. Previous experience has shown that participants will often not show up at a training event if they are instructed (“ordered”) by their supervisors to attend a seminar. Consequently, UNITAR opted for a system of voluntary attendance: all UNAMA staff members were informed by e-mail broadcast that the seminars would take place and were invited to apply if interested. Obviously, applicants were advised to obtain the approval of their supervisors, too. The evaluation showed that a surprisingly high number of participants (25%) were nonetheless assigned by their supervisors to attend a seminar. The numbers happened to match perfectly and almost all applicants could be granted a place in one of the five seminars. Most remarkably, 56% of all seminar participants were Afghans and only 44% were internationals. (In previous UNITAR seminars, the percentage of national staff had ranged from a very low 14% in UNMIK or 17% in UNMISET to a high 33% in MONUC or even 50% in UNMIBH and UNMEE). This suggested a rather lukewarm attitude of the international staff but making the seminars an astonishing success in terms of national capacity-building, which was all the more noteworthy because gender is far from being the easiest or least controversial subject in Afghanistan.In line with the guidelines governing the training programme, many participants were junior or mid-level civilian UNAMA staff members. As was actually intended, only a few of them dealt exclusively with women’s or children’s issues as a part of their professional duties. Although these UNITAR seminars do generally (and unfortunately) attract only a few senior-level staff members it was disappointing that in UNAMA this tendency was even more noticeable than in other missions.
Although the majority of participants were UNAMA staff working in Kabul, Herat and Kunduz, several persons from other duty stations took part in the seminars, too. An encouraging number of participants who were not UNAMA personnel also attended the seminars. They comprised staff from other UN agencies, Afghan government officials and NGO activists. A common lunch on both seminar days, as well as coffee breaks, allowed the participants to mix frequently and get to know each other, with the contact between Afghans and internationals seeming to work particularly well in Herat and Kunduz. All participants who attended the seminar in its entirety were awarded a certificate.
At a very early stage of the preparations, UNAMA had suggested to open the training to some soldiers of the NATO-led peacekeeping force ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), especially those working in civil-military cooperation. This was seen as an opportunity to further strengthen the already existing cooperation between UNAMA and ISAF in certain fields of training. After week-long laborious debates between DPKO, UNAMA, UNITAR and ISAF over the number of ISAF participants and their expected appearance and behaviour, the training venue, financial questions, and the amount of visible separation or linkage between UNAMA and ISAF, a high-level UNAMA official finally decreed to fill half of the places in the first seminar with ISAF participants. In addition, one ISAF soldier from the German-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kunduz attended the fifth UNITAR seminar in that town. As a sign of goodwill and to promote cooperation between the international organizations working in Afghanistan, UNITAR made this training opportunity available to ISAF in an unbureaucratic fashion and free of charge.
Because of the close geographical proximity of the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), the (civilian) Training Focal Point from UNMOGIP was invited to attend one UNITAR seminar in Kabul.
As in other missions, a “wrap-up briefing” was offered to the highest-level UNAMA staff members who would not have been able to attend two days of training. In such a briefing, the audience is first informed of the purpose, target group and methodology of the UNITAR seminars as well as of their place in peacekeeping training. Afterwards, all trainers normally give brief summaries of their presentations, emphasizing their main messages and commenting on the feedback drawn from the discussions with the participants. Despite several reminders, UNAMA’s leadership did not react on this offer until ten days before the suggested date. At this point, the idea of such a briefing was cautiously welcomed, still not as something that the target audience would like to attend, but as something it ought to, in the view of the senior management. As very few trainers seemed eager, after five seminars, to speak at yet another event, UNITAR and the UNAMA Training Section made preparations to take over most presentations themselves. Eventually, however, the plan to hold the briefing was quietly dropped altogether when the chosen date appeared to conflict with other meetings and trainings and when UNAMA (for lack of time or lack of enthusiasm) failed to circulate invitations to the target audience.
In March 2004, UNITAR undertook a preparatory visit to Afghanistan to learn about UNAMA’s situation and, in particular, the likely needs and expectations of the seminar participants. Once the training was underway it emerged that several key factors had been set by UNAMA based on mere assumptions. The most spectacular miscalculation was the warning (voiced by more than one senior-level UNAMA official) that “no Afghan UNAMA staff member would ever agree to sit in one training room with ISAF soldiers.” In reality, the mixed UNAMA/ISAF seminar turned out to be the most popular UNITAR event, with both local and international staff eagerly applying for places. Tensions between the soldiers and civilians were non-existent. UNITAR was also warned that UNAMA staff would be far too busy to attend any training during the voter registration phase in Afghanistan. UNITAR obliged and scheduled four of five seminars after the end of the voter registration period. (Mainly because of the deteriorating security situation, the election timetable was later changed.) Again, it was the earliest seminar of all events that turned out to be far more popular than all others.
Methodology and Training Material
The five UNITAR seminars ought to have been, and largely were, identical in content. It is standard practice of UNITAR to organize between two and four seminars per peacekeeping operation to reach a reasonably high number of participants, yet keep the number of persons per seminar manageable (25 to 35) in view of the frequent discussions, exercises and role-plays that are built into the training sessions. Organizing five training events in three different towns required extraordinary stamina, not least because organizers, collaborators and presenters saw each new seminar not as a repeat event, but rather a fresh opportunity to demand changes in content, timing, personnel or other practical details. The UNAMA offices in Herat and Kunduz, which hosted one seminar each, offered logistical support, with a flawless organization in Herat but a slightly more confused and ad hoc approach in Kunduz, which, however, led to nothing worse than a few hectic hours of last-minute work and did not impede the overall success of the fifth seminar.At the beginning of the course, each participant was given a binder of background reading material for further self-study, which contained academic essays, official UN documents, laws and legal instruments, fact sheets, reports, case studies, public information material, printed versions of visual presentations used during the seminars, etc. This resource package had been produced by UNITAR, for the first time without the cooperation of any lecturer save one. This was yet another example of what can only be described as most peculiar work ethics in the UN community in Afghanistan: despite several reminders, of more than a dozen lecturers only one contributing agency (Save the Children Sweden) readily suggested and supplied background reading material for the seminar participants. As a result, over 90% of all training material for the UNAMA course was selected by UNITAR alone whereas in other peacekeeping missions this share had usually been below 10%.
To a very large extent, the training seminars for UNAMA relied on lecturers who were based in Afghanistan. Indeed, most of them were even Afghan nationals. This time, not a single trainer was brought in from abroad (not counting the UNITAR representative, who in UNAMA for the first time acted not only as the organizer but also delivered training sessions). After test runs in Kosovo and East Timor, where the UNITAR seminars relied heavily on local trainers (which presented some difficulties but overall led to encouraging results), UNITAR welcomed the opportunity to organize the UNAMA seminars in a similar fashion. From a capacity-building perspective, the use of local lecturers rather than expatriates is an initiative that deserves full support and even some sacrifices. Most local presenters spoke English well enough for professional training purposes, and their familiarity with their own country was obviously an added bonus. While the presentation skills of most Afghan trainers were not outstanding, only a tiny minority of seminar participants (internationals) was unforgiving in this respect and reprimanded the lecturers for lacking the polished speaking and entertainment skills of western-trained professional presenters.
There was, however, one grave disadvantage - a merely practical aspect, but at times so disrupting that UNITAR may in the future return to seminars with a mix of locally-based presenters and short-term consultants brought from abroad: hardly anyone of the trainers saw the UNITAR seminars as his or her most important task. As a consequence, preparations between February and May moved at a snail’s pace, deadlines were not even acknowledged before the fifth reminder, and more than once a presenter asked for time changes or simply cancelled his or her appearance a few hours before the start of the training module. On the other hand, exemplary flexibility, reliability, helpfulness and cooperation were shown by the presenters from Save the Children Sweden and the World Bank, for which UNITAR expresses it heartfelt gratitude.
Interagency Cooperation
The courses were successfully implemented due to a generally well-functioning cooperation between UNITAR, the Civilian Training Section of DPKO in New York and UNAMA’s Training Section. The help of UNAMA’s Chief Training Officer proved vital for the administrative and logistical preparation of the seminars since there was a limit to the number of tasks that could be handled by UNITAR in Geneva, thousands of miles away from the training venues. As usual within the framework of UNITAR’s seminars for peacekeeping operations, cooperation partners outside the peace mission collaborated by sending trainers to the seminars and by supplying training material.On closer examination, however, of all peacekeeping operations that UNITAR has delivered this training to, UNAMA appeared to be the most difficult and tiring as far as the practical execution of the programme was concerned. Though many impressions were based on anecdotal evidence and individual incidents that happened during UNITAR’s short stay in Afghanistan, they began to form a troubling picture too coherent to dismiss. The pervasive feeling was that the mission UNAMA did not care about its people, and the people - perhaps as a consequence - did not care about their work. Hardly any UNAMA international staff member that UNITAR talked to seemed to genuinely enjoy his or her work, or being in Afghanistan. Only the UNAMA Training Section supported the UNITAR seminars with any degree of regularity and reliability (especially with excellent training rooms and equipment), at least during the planning phase and during a preparation visit by UNITAR to UNAMA in March 2004. The amount of assistance that the UNAMA Training Section was able to offer, however, was frequently hampered by other, parallel training activities demanding the Section’s attention and by the chronic understaffing of the Training Section, in which several posts had remained vacant for months. Most other UNAMA components limited their support for the project to polite expressions of encouragement, declared themselves too busy to care or focused their attention on random aspects that happened to interest them particularly. Logistical support structures in UNAMA were often unsatisfactory. Two examples were the Transport Section and the mail, pouch and cargo procedures. Outsourcing seemed no solution, as amply demonstrated by the privately operated UN staff restaurant with its laughable lack of organizational and managerial professionalism. Some lack of professionalism and sloppiness displayed by international staff was so staggering (and unique) that UNITAR initially mistook it for a joke, which it was not. For example, more than once UNITAR was told that persons had not acted on certain pieces of information because they had “not read [their] e-mails” or had “not looked at the enclosed attachments.” Throughout the UN community persons seemed to believe that problems and questions would simply disappear if one only ignored them persistently. The behaviour of many Afghan UNAMA staff members, on the other hand, seemed characterized by nepotism, a total non-comprehension of the concept of loyalty towards the UN, a lack of professionalism unfit in any UN environment, the frequent absence of basic qualifications, and the need for constant supervision of even the simplest assignments. UNITAR sometimes felt that other UN agencies with a longer history of operations in Afghanistan than UNAMA had been luckier and more successful in attracting and keeping a cadre of national staff whose reliability and professionalism had been developed, tested and proven over many years.
To determine the reasons for this unsatisfactory state of affairs a detailed analysis would be necessary. To UNITAR, the causes appeared to be structural rather than personal sub-performance of individual staff members. In private, many UNAMA staff members blamed the hasty “Afghanization” policy of UNAMA and the lack of a forceful and robust approach vis-à-vis the host country’s power structures and their undeniable shortcomings. Without doubt, the very harsh living conditions (security situation, movement restrictions, lack of recreational possibilities, pollution) also contributed to above-average stress levels, which in turn led to low productivity and a tense work atmosphere.
The seminars were financed with funds from UNITAR’s programme budget, but substantial in-kind contributions (especially ground and air transport in the mission area) were made by UNAMA. UNMOGIP covered the travel costs of its staff member who attended the seminar in Kabul.
TRAINING MODULES INTRODUCTION TO GENDER ISSUES AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO UN PEACE OPERATIONS
Luntan Bayarmaa, UNAMA Gender Advisor (in Kabul)
Murwarid Ziayee, National Gender Officer, UNAMA (in Herat and Kunduz)
The objectives of Ms. Luntan Bayarmaa’s and Ms. Murwarid Ziayee’s presentation were to define gender, to explain why an understanding of gender is important in peace operations, and to explore ways of addressing gender issues. The participants learned to distinguish between “sex” and “gender,” identified stereotypical gender roles and discussed the relevance of gender in the family, community and the state. Lastly, the participants discovered how men and women are affected differently in times of conflict because of their gender roles and responsibilities and that, therefore, constant gender analysis is an indispensable working tool of all peace operations. To conclude this session, the presenters gave an overview of key UN gender documents and analyzed the UN’s official definition of gender mainstreaming.OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL INSTRUMENTS PROTECTING WOMEN: HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN LAW
Aylin Arslaner, UNAMA Chief Training Officer (in Kabul and Kunduz)
Martin Bohnstedt, UNITAR Programme Officer
Ms. Arslaner started this session by asking the participants to list what type of support women typically needed in times of war. She then explained the main sources and basic principles of international humanitarian law and how selected norms of humanitarian law attempt to address precisely these concerns identified by the participants. Nonetheless, participants were cautioned against undue optimism and discovered the long historical invisibility of crimes against women in wars as well as women’s frequent absence from peace arrangements. Ms. Arslaner concluded her presentation with a look at international criminal law, which she explained finally established individual criminal responsibility, especially for crimnes against women, in the face of the changing nature of modern conflicts, thus complementing the old traditional norms of international humanitarian law. In the second half of this session, Mr. Bohnstedt introduced the participants to women’s rights enshrined in international law, particularly the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). He outlined the history of this treaty, the signature and ratification process, the concept and dangers of reservations to the treaty, as well as the most important substantive provisions. Considerable time was devoted to explore CEDAW in the Afghan context: the participants learned of the unusual history of CEDAW in Afghanistan (signed more than two decades ago, yet ratified only in 2003), confirmed with regret that hardly any Afghan knew of CEDAW’s existence and contents, and discussed steps towards further progress, in particular the likelihood of Afghanistan ratifying the Optional Protocol to CEDAW.“WOMEN FACING WAR” - THE MULTIFACETED ROLES OF WOMEN IN CONFLICT SITUATIONS: ICRC VIDEO CLIPS AND DISCUSSION
Aylin Arslaner, UNAMA Chief Training Officer (in Kabul and Kunduz)
Martin Bohnstedt, UNITAR Programme Officer
Through a series of emotionally strong, at times shocking, video clips produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross the seminar participants were made acutely aware of the multi-faceted roles of women in conflict situations: they experience war in a multitude of ways, be it as refugees or victims of land mines or sexual violence, or take on roles as combatants (voluntarily or involuntarily), courageous humanitarian activists or heads of households. The participants analyzed each film, discussed stereotypes of men and women in wartime and discussed whether women are in fact more vulnerable than men. They eventually discovered that women in conflict situations often accept new roles, are a source of strength in their communities and need support in this regard.A HUNDRED YEARS OF CONFLICT: AFGHANISTAN THROUGH A GENDER LENS
Carol Le Duc, Senior Social Development Specialist (Gender), World Bank
In her lecture, Ms. Le Duc demonstrated that Afghanistan had been an ideological and military battleground between the forces of modernity and traditionalism not only since the Taliban, but for at least a century, with the question of women’s rights often high on the political agenda. She lamented that fact that all political forces had been using women in power-plays, that it had almost always been men who interpreted women’s rights, and that until modern days the immensely complex problems of women in Afghanistan were simplistically reduced - especially by outsiders - to the question of dress. Ms. Le Duc also denounced a stubborn clinging to tribal and cultural traditions, either instinctively and in an unreflecting way (“it has always been like this”), or deliberately (in order to preserve power structures). She further exposed how many of these tribal customs were (and are) wrongly labelled “Islamic” to give the divine legitimacy. However, Ms. Le Duc warned that not everything was gloom, that Afghan women carried authority and responsibility in the household sphere, and that they were certainly not a homogenous group of helpless and hopeless victims. Following that thought further, the participants were encouraged to distinguish three distinct groups: rural women, the urban elites and western-educated returnees. Ms. Le Duc expressed her belief that at the current point in history these three very different social groups would be able to achieve real, fundamental and sustainable changes in Afghanistan as long as they worked together und used each other’s strengths and knowledge.I) BRIEF LEGAL OVERVIEW: CHILD RIGHTS AS HUMAN RIGHTS
II) CHILD PROTECTION AND CHILD PARTICIPATION PROJECTS BY UNICEF AND SAVE THE CHILDREN: DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION OF ACTIVITIES
III) PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF CHILD PROTECTION AND ADVOCACY WORK IN AFGHANISTAN
Shirin Persson, Programme Manager, Save the Children Sweden
Zabihullah Sadat, Trainer, Children’s Consultation Project, Save the Children Sweden
Ms. Persson and Mr. Sadat started their presentation with an overview of child rights in major human rights instruments. They criticized that many of these norms lacked any concept of children as young citizens whom one could work with and solely viewed them as passive recipients of charitable benefits. They also explained that although the wording of most general human rights norms clearly did not exclude children, many treaties were interpreted narrowly, encompassing adults only, which was why the Convention on the Rights of the Child had to be created. Moving towards the situation in Afghanistan, both speakers regretted that child rights were frequently labelled “unislamic” and described how Save the Children’s campaigns therefore used quotes from the Koran to counter that misinformation and prove that the concept of child rights does in fact exist in Islamic principles. In the second half of their session, Ms. Persson and Mr. Sadat presented Save the Children’s “Children and Young People Consultation Project,” during which 1500 Afghan boys and girls aged 8 to 18 had been asked to describe their wishes, dreams and lives, with the results being presented to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children. The participants learned that this project had acted as a catalyst encouraging political and community activism, with many children’s groups claiming rights and achieving successes that ranged from educational facilities to children’s media projects and care centres for street children.WOMEN AND CHILDREN AS REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS
Marina Hamidzada, Associate Gender Officer, UNHCR Kabul (in Kabul and Herat)
Mohamad Taher, Assistant Community Services Officer, UNHCR Kabul
Zahida Shahidy, Assistant Protection Officer, UNHCR Kabul (in Kunduz)
The UNHCR lecturers initially presented general UNHCR policies on gender (such as gender-disaggregated data, encouraging participation, increasing the number of female UNHCR staff) and outlined how UNHCR was mainstreaming gender in all fields of its work, e.g. capacity-building, protection, repatriation and reintegration. They then moved to UNHCR’s work in Afghanistan and gave examples of how UNHCR provided gender-segregated facilities where necessary, monitored cultural practices and supported communities in establishing networks to protect women at risk. The participants also learned what obstacles UNHCR faced, ranging from population and even staff unwillingness to challenge conservative cultural values to concrete resistance from authorities and criminal attacks against UNHCR workers and projects. In the second part of the session, UNHCR spoke of children that were of concern to the organization: refugees, internally displaced children, returnees and deportees. The trainers explained how the dependency, vulnerability and developmental needs of children called for special attention and which principles UNHCR adhered to in achieving protection and durable solutions for children. They then took each of the four categories of children and analyzed what caused their situation, what specific challenges and dangers they faced, and what UNHCR was doing to address these problems. In closing, UNHCR pronounced its recommendations to improve the fate of those children, namely clearer laws, an increased awareness of child rights, improved education for girls in rural areas and better coordination among humanitarian agencies.GENDER ASPECTS AND PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF DDR ACTIVITIES
Masood Amer, “Afghanistan’s New Beginnings Programme”
Annemarie Brolsma, “Afghanistan’s New Beginnings Programme”
Ms. Brolsma and Mr. Amer began their presentation by describing Afghanistan’s New Beginnings Programme, a three-year governmental initiative to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate (thus “DDR”) up to 100000 soldiers to assist them in their transition from military to civilian life. They also warned that the DDR programme had no power to force soldiers to undergo such treatment and neither the power nor intention to remove all weapons from Afghan society. Rather, the programme’s aims were listed as assisting in the creation of a safe and stable environment, through security sector reform, downsizing of military forces and supporting the central government. The presenters then gave an overview of the practical DDR process, from the collection of weapons and distribution of food and household items to vocational training programmes and career counselling. Lastly, they described how the DDR programme paid attention to gender aspects by integrating the ex-combatants’ families into the DDR process, by tailoring information campaigns to women and by carrying out social impact monitoring in the communities.INTERACTING WITH, AND OUTREACH TO, WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN: LESSONS LEARNED FROM WFP’S COMMITMENT TO WOMEN, AND ITS NATIONAL RISK AND VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT
Maliha Danish, Head of Women Empowerment Unit, World Food Programme (in Kabul)
Nadir Habib, World Food Programme (in Herat)
Gulabuddin Rashid, World Food Programme (in Kunduz)
In their presentations, Ms. Danish, Mr. Habib and Mr. Rashid described the World Food Programme’s commitments to women, which ranged from providing food aid to advocating for gender equality and adapting WFP’s staffing and working methods. The participants learned how WFP tackles the issue of gender in control over food, e.g. by issuing ration cards to women and consulting women in designing food delivery mechanisms. The WFP trainers emphasized their organization’s desire to make the Afghan people understand how households and societies gain and advance when women are better nourished, educated and have a stronger voice in decision-making. Lastly, it was described how intelligently targeted food aid (here: for female schoolchildren) can help achieve seemingly unrelated development goals (namely, to ensure that girls go to and stay in school).I) THE AFGHAN MINISTRY OF WOMEN’S AFFAIRS (MOWA) AS THE LEAD MINISTRY FOR WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT AND GENDER EQUALITY: BREAKTHROUGHS AND CHALLENGES
II) INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT TO THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT IN GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND IN WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT
Ermie Valdeavilla, Capacity Building Expert/Team Leader, UNIFEM (in Kabul)
Nooria Haqnigar, Head of Training and Advocacy Department, Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA)
Nasiba Amiri, Head of Training/Gender Advocacy Office, Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA)
Ms. Haqnigar and Ms. Amiri presented the mandate of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) and its three main strategies to the participants: gender mainstreaming in Afghan politics, inter-ministerial collaboration, and affirmative action to allow Afghan women to “catch up.” Consequently, they characterized MOWA as an advocate for women’s rights, an enabler facilitating processes, an innovator introducing new ideas, a coordinator of activities, a resource of technical expertise and a monitor of overall developments. The participants then learned of MOWA’s training and advocacy activities designed to build the capacity of Afghan governmental and NGO staff through nationwide workshops on gender issues, but also general professional skills. Ms. Valdeavilla (who only spoke at UNITAR’s first seminar in Kabul) described how UNIFEM strengthens MOWA’s technical and institutional capacity in gender training, research, analysis, planning and coordination. Being an outsider with an independent and critical opinion, but also great sympathy for MOWA, Ms. Valdeavilla acknowledged and congratulated MOWA for its successes so far, yet listed some of the remaining challenges: to generate a shared vision on gender mainstreaming, build constituency support, develop a long-term vision, and further consolidate the gender efforts of all stakeholders.EVALUATIONSelected Comments from Participants
104 participants completed the anonymous evaluation questionnaire at the end of the seminars. Although most questions came with a pre-defined set of answers that participants could choose from, the majority of participants quite enthusiastically filled in the “Any comments?” sections on the questionnaire and added more specific comments, some of which are summarized or reproduced here. While some well-trained internationals found the seminar too basic or dissected each aspect critically, many Afghan participants were clearly grateful for this chance to acquire knowledge and enthusiastically positive about what for several of them seemed to have been their first professional training experience ever. Some of the participants' comments are summarized or reproduced here.General:
Training modules and lecturers:
Course objectives:
Recommendations
Although UNITAR has no authority to make recommendations to UNAMA or other peace operations, it is worth recording the most frequent suggestions made by participants to UNITAR, UNAMA or peace missions in general. Other suggestions are based on UNITAR’s own observations and the wealth of experience gained by holding these seminars in several missions. It it thus recommended that the relevant stakeholders should:
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