On the occasion of International Women's Day the EU Delegation and Swedish Embassy co-host a briefing on AHRDO 's Legislative Theatre initiative on women's rights (07/03/2012)
On the occasion of International Women's Day, the Chargé d Affaires a.i. of the Delegation of the European Union, Luc Vandebon, and the Ambassador of Sweden, Torbjörn Petterson, co-hosted a briefing by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (AHRDO) on its Legislative Theatre initiative on women's rights. This program in which 4,500 women participated was conducted in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, Bamiyan and Herat.
Legislative theatre is a community-based initiative aimed at encouraging bottom up participation in key legislative, political and social processes. The outcomes of this initiative are written into an analytical report: "Afghan Women after the Taliban: Will History Repeat Itself?" Women's major concerns, challenges and opportunities expressed within the framework of the legislative theatre, consultations and referendums are reflected in this report. Legal predicaments, international scale down, potential political deal with the insurgent groups, increasing hostility of the Afghan conservative religious elements to women's public role, and lack of systematic relations between the urbanized female elites and the masses of the women are some of the challenges that are highlighted in this report.