Afghanistan Gender Equality Report Card: Evaluating the Government of Afghanistan’s Commitments to Women and Gender Equality

Executive Summary

Since 2001, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) has made over 2,300 explicit commitments to the women of Afghanistan on gender equality in laws, treaties and agreements, policies, and strategic documents, a figure that does not even include the innumerable verbal commitments made over the past fourteen years. While much of the focus in discussions on government commitments to women’s rights center on the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA), this document only encompasses a small fraction of the commitments that have been made. This research reviews these commitments in a number of key areas: peace processes, security, health, education, access to justice, violence against women, access to resources and services, political participation, economic opportunity and employment, protection of vulnerable groups, and awareness-raising among the public. It assesses both progress and shortcomings in each of these areas from the perspectives of Afghan women, according to a survey completed with 154 members of EPD’s Provincial Women’s Network (PWN) in five provinces of Afghanistan, combined with desk research and stakeholder interviews.

As a baseline for measuring progress regarding the government’s commitments, this report aims to take stock of how far the government has come since 2001, and which areas need more focus and improvement moving into the Transformation Decade. The indicators were selected to reflect both the most common commitments throughout policies and documents from the GIRoA and the most critical areas for improvement that would represent actual positive change in the daily lives of Afghan women. The Afghanistan Gender Equality Report Card will be conducted through EPD’s Provincial Women’s Network and a report card will be produced annually as a monitoring tool that enables civil society, the Afghan government, and the international community to hold the government accountable to its commitments to the women of Afghanistan and gender equality.