The UNITAR Hiroshima Women’s Leadership Programme for Afghanistan: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Action Plans and Governance builds upon the experiences and lessons learned from UNITAR Hiroshima’s engagement with Afghanistan over the last 15 years. Building upon the lessons learned from the inaugural 2018 cycle, the UNITAR Hiroshima Office will develop a mid-term multi-engagement training programme focusing on empowering women and fostering inclusive and effective good governance in Afghanistan.  

The Challenges of Afghanistan 
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has been making significant progress in the rebuilding of its political system and institutions, however, it still faces a range of systemic and interconnected political, administrative, economic, and social challenges. This is reflected in efforts for women empowerment – whilst there has been progress made, such as 28% of parliament seats being held by women and three female Ambassadors being appointed – there are still serious issues facing women in Afghanistan, particularly around education, job opportunities, where women only hold 4% of managerial positions , and violence.  The action undertaken at the top levels of government need to be matched and integrated with bottom-up actions and achievements to ensure all women in Afghanistan are able to benefit from such changes and empowerment. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, and the Afghanistan-SDGs National Document and Alignment Framework were drafted in late 2018, leading to opportunities to build understanding and capacity to ensure that upcoming initiatives and projects, by government, civil society, and the private sector, can be implemented in an effective manner to support good governance and gender equality, which is an underlying component of the SDGs as a whole and is essential to supporting development in Afghanistan. 

Good Governance and Gender Empowerment 
Governance is the “process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented", with Good Governance ensuring that such decisions and decision-making processes are “participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, and follow the rule of law.”The Tokyo Declaration, which supports Afghanistan’s Transformation Decade (2015-2024), recognises that “good governance at national and sub-national levels is essential for strong and sustainable economic development and improved livelihoods of the Afghan people
The Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework (ANPDF) 2017-2021 identifies strengthening governance as one of its six development pillars. Whilst Afghanistan is benefitting from a range of governance reform initiatives, there is a lot more that needs to be done to expand the reach and uniformity of such.

There is growing global, regional and local understanding of the need for gender equality and empowerment. The G7 Ise-Shima Leaders Declaration specifically indicated that all members will commit further to creating “…a society where all women and girls are empowered and actively engaged for sustainable, inclusive and equitable economic growth5”, empowered through, amongst other initiatives, capacity-building through education and training.  

Within Afghanistan, the ANPDF highlights the structural barriers, cultural norms and insecurity challenges currently hindering women in contributing to economic development and society.6