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The Pitfalls of Protection
Get PDFSince the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy
The Aid Agencies and the Fragile States Agenda
Get PDFIn recent years, a consensus appears to have emerged that a variety of problems can be understood in terms of state failure. This paper reviews one aspect of this trend, the concept of fragile states that has recently been adopted by development agencies. The term is used by donors to refer to states that are failing to adopt policies and institutions believed necessary for development. According to donors, not only does such failure affect development outcomes, fragile states are also associated with violent conflicts and related security threats. The paper argues the fragile state concept must be critically reconsidered on both accounts. First, whether the concept can be said to capture the dynamics and policies associated with so-called developmental states is doubtful. Second, equating a states ability to promote development with its capacity to prevent and reduce violent conflict, while a drawing upon a common conflation within the so-called securitydevelopment nexus, is not supported by historical evidence
The Aid Agencies and the Fragile States Agenda
Get PDFIn recent years, a consensus appears to have emerged that a variety of problems can be understood in terms of state failure. This paper reviews one aspect of this trend, the concept of fragile states that has recently been adopted by development agencies. The term is used by donors to refer to states that are failing to adopt policies and institutions believed necessary for development. According to donors, not only does such failure affect development outcomes, fragile states are also associated with violent conflicts and related security threats. The paper argues the fragile state concept must be critically reconsidered on both accounts. First, whether the concept can be said to capture the dynamics and policies associated with so-called developmental states is doubtful. Second, equating a states ability to promote development with its capacity to prevent and reduce violent conflict, while a drawing upon a common conflation within the so-called securitydevelopment nexus, is not supported by historical evidence
The Pitfalls of Protection
Get PDFSince the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy
Promoting women's rights in Afghanistan: a call for less aid and more politics
Get PDFTo NATO countries, promoting women’s rights in Afghanistan is often framed as a choice between committing to high levels of aid for gender-related activities and an uncompromising public stance vis-à-vis the Afghan authorities, or a realisation that women’s rights is an internal issue where outsiders can achieve little. Both these options are based on misguided assumptions. Attempting to “fast track” Afghan women’s rights in isolation from local politics will fail. But neither is it correct to assume that Western actions can have no impact. To the extent that Norway wants to make gender equality in Afghanistan a foreign policy priority, the most effective strategy is a comprehensive one. This means more attention to the negative effects of the international presence on Afghan feminist politics. It also means a long-term commitment. This commitment should not be measured in aid volumes, but in strategic support based on knowledge of civil society and Afghan politics more broadly
The Pitfalls of Protection: Gender, Violence, and Power in Afghanistan
No full textSince the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, violence against women has emerged as the single most important issue for Afghan gender politics. The Pitfalls of Protection, based on research conducted in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2015, locates the struggles over gender violence in local and global power configurations. Torunn Wimpelmann finds that aid flows and geopolitics have served as both opportunities for and obstacles to feminist politics in Afghanistan. Showing why Afghan activists often chose to use the leverage of Western powers instead of entering into either protracted negotiations with powerful national actors or broad political mobilization, this book examines both the achievements and the limits of this strategy
Adultery, rape, and escaping the house: The protection and policing of female sexuality in Afghanistan
Get PDFThis working paper undertakes an initial survey of the dynamics through which the criminalization of female sexuality structures women’s access to protection against rape in Afghanistan, examining both legislation and legal practice. Given the relative dearth of existing research and material on this topic in Afghanistan (but see Latiff 2009; Tawfik 2009), this paper is necessarily preliminary in scope. It nonetheless puts forward three, interrelated arguments. Firstly, the paper argues that rape victims’ vulnerability to incrimination for zina (and the acute unpredictability about the grounds for incrimination) hinders their access to justice. Secondly, the paper argues that the zina–rape relationship in its narrow sense only partially addresses the nexus between the criminalization of female sexuality and protection against rape. A fuller appreciation of this nexus necessitates zooming out: initially to a peculiar Afghan legal practice—the detaining of women for “running away” from home—and then to how that practice blocks protection against a prevalent form of sexual violence in Afghanistan—forced marriage. Finally, the paper suggests that linkages between the protecting of women against sexual abuse and the policing of female sexual conduct must be understood in the context of a state whose default position has been to relegate female sexuality to family control, rather than to directly intervene. Thus, while the Afghan state has routinely prosecuted and detained women (as well as some men) for consensual sexual transgressions, it has not, by and large, sought to use the figure of the unchaste or immoral woman as a tool for expanding its power over society, in the way witnessed, for instance, in contemporary Iran and Sudan (as well as in Afghanistan during Taliban rule). Correspondingly, the state has also been a reluctant intervener in regulating coercive sexual crimes. In a number of high profile rape cases,
The price of protection: gender, violence and power in Afghanistan
Get PDFThis thesis examines contestations over gender violence as points of entry into an analysis ofgender, politics and sovereign power in contemporary Afghanistan. It explores the evolvingparameters of what ‘counts’ as violence against women in Afghanistan, articulated in legalframeworks and practices, in public and media debates and in the interventions of politicalleaders, diplomats and aid workers. The thesis asks whether violence against women hasbecome a governance issue in Afghanistan and what this means for the position of women andfor broader relations of power. These questions are investigated through an examination of theorigins and fate of a new law on violence against women, a series of controversies overwomen’s shelters, attempts to bestow recognition on informal justice processes and thetrajectories of individual episodes of violence as they travelled through different andsometimes competing legal forums. I show how the outcome of these struggles have thepotential to redraw boundaries between government and family domains, and to subordinatewomen to kinship power, or alternatively, constitute them as independent legal persons.The thesis further analyses negotiations over and interventions into violence against womenas revealing of shifting domains and claims of sovereignty, of projects of power and ofpolitical technologies. The processes detailed in the thesis illuminate a landscape of plural andcompeting legal regimes that in specific times and places presided over individual episodes ofgender violence The thesis also shows that far from operating as a singular bloc, Westernforays in Afghanistan produced multiple and contradictory effects on women’s security andprotection
Er Kabul trygt for retur?
No full textNoreg har så langt i år returnert over 500 afghanarar til Kabul. Samtidig er tryggleiken forverra i heile landet, og spesielt Kabul har store sivile tap. Stortinget er delt i oppfatninga om ein skal stanse eller halde fram med retur av dei som fekk midlertidig opphald i Noreg til dei fylte 18 år.
Spørsmålet er difor: Kor trygt er det å returnere desse afghanarane? Er det mogleg for internflyktningar utan nettverk å klare seg i byen
Missing from the picture: Men imprisoned for ‘moral crimes’ in Afghanistan
Get PDFRecent years have seen sustained focus on the prosecution of Afghan women and girls for ‘moral crimes’ such as adultery and ‘running away’. However, many Afghan men are also charged with and convicted for moral crimes. This paper examines how Afghan law penalizes men for consensual heterosexual acts, and presents statistics suggesting that hundreds of men are currently imprisoned for such ‘moral crimes’ in the country. It argues that although women are particularly vulnerable to prosecution for moral crimes in Afghanistan, debates and advocacy over this issue must include men’s experiences too.
This research is part of the project New Afghan Men? Marriage, Masculinities and Sexual Politics in Contemporary Afghanistan, funded by the Research Council of Norway and carried out by Peace Training and Research Organization (PTRO) and Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI)
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