Underfunded and restricted: The struggle of Afghan women’s rights NGOs

Karima, 28, had an arranged marriage in 2015. But soon her husband started beating her. In her distress, she sought counseling in March from an Afghan women’s NGO. When staffers saw her bloodied face, they knew something was wrong. But when they asked her what happened, she said she had only “fallen down,” and feared going to a doctor. After much urging, Karima — whose real name is hidden due to security issues — admitted that the bruises were caused by her husband. But she was afraid to go to court, thinking she would only be blamed for her predicament. “Go to hell,” her husband also told an NGO staffer initially as he was confident that no case could be filed against him. Her lawyers however successfully won Karima’s case six months later by using her husband’s inability to financially support their children as an argument. She’s now divorced. Such success stories are almost unheard of under Taliban rule, where women and girls now face multiple restrictions and where initiatives put in place for the past two decades to uphold their rights have been wiped out. In a matter of months after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, they shut down the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, replacing it with a ministry known for enforcing the Taliban’s harsh rules. Most shelters that served as safe spaces for women were closed, and some aid organizations that used to link cases to police for legal assistance have now been limited to providing medical care and psychosocial support to survivors of gender-based violence. The few organizations left to help survivors increasingly face restrictions from the Taliban regime. The Taliban has put in a policy requiring lawyers to retake a test to renew their licenses that excludes women lawyers from this process. According to Belquis Ahmadi, who has over two decades of experience working on issues such as gender, human rights, and rule of law in Afghanistan and is speaking in her personal capacity, there are at least 1,500 licensed female defense lawyers in Afghanistan, and none of them are allowed to work under the Taliban. Many cases of domestic violence now aren’t even recorded, said Mary Akrami, executive director of the Afghan Women's Network. For these reasons, she said most international donors believe funding will only be “wasted” or may not be used as intended. “This is arguably one of the fastest, largest scale, most comprehensive roll back of women rights based on their sex and their gender that we have seen pursued by an authority.” --— Reem Alsalem, United Nations special rapporteur This is evident in the experience of women’s rights NGOs Devex spoke to who said there’s very little funding to support their work. Only 8.6% of the appeal for work on gender-based violence in the country has been met, according to data from the United Nations’ financial tracking service. In addition, some argue very little humanitarian funding, if at all, goes to local women-led organizations – one of the ugly realities in the country, Akrami wrote via email. Lack of legal aid The NGO that helped Karima is one of the very few organizations still able to provide legal aid to gender-based violence survivors in the country. The work has become so difficult due to Taliban policies — which may have given men more ammunition in justifying violence — and lack of international donor funding, according to Ameeri, an Afghan human rights lawyer and women’s activist who fled when the Taliban took over. She requested the NGO not to be named for security reasons. While there’s some funding for psychosocial support services, Ameeri said it’s harder to get funding for legal aid work. “None of the donors give [even] $1 for doing legal aid in Afghanistan,” she said, adding that lawyers are facing difficult circumstances in doing their work. The lack of support is contributing to a “deep justice gap” in the country, she said, as it leaves women survivors of violence and those in conflict with the law without legal and support services “at a critical time when gender-based persecution has greatly intensified, domestic violence and child marriages have increased, and when law and policy reforms by the Taliban are likely to institutionalize a gender apartheid in Afghanistan.” The U.S. Institute of Peace used to work on the rule of law and women’s access to justice, but Ahmadi said the institution ceased operations in the country for several reasons, including not being able to employ women and work as per their mandate. The lack of international funding goes beyond legal aid. Many Afghan NGOs working on women’s rights felt abandoned by the international community. VOICE, an international nonprofit that describes itself as bridge-builders between donors and women and girl-led groups, described in its latest report that it receives daily calls from Afghan women asking for support, as many of the international NGOs, U.N. agencies, and governments they previously worked with are no longer doing so. “It's a terrible feeling to be abandoned,” Ahmadi said. “I'm hoping and I know that there are efforts underway to provide funding to civil society organizations through the U.N. and other safe mechanisms,” she said. Some donors said they are currently providing some legal assistance to survivors of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, but would rather keep their work under the radar to avoid retaliation from authorities. The domino effect The impact on women and girls and other gender-nonconforming individuals goes beyond physical harm. They also have had to endure “colossal psychological violence and mental health consequences,” Reem Alsalem, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, wrote to Devex in an email. “We have heard sadly of a number of women taking their lives which shows you how desperate and hopeless they have become,” she said. Afghan women working on human rights inside and outside Afghanistan also suffer mentally. In the VOICE report, nearly everyone interviewed reported suffering from depression, anxiety, hopelessness, nightmares, trouble sleeping, and/or fear for family members in Afghanistan. The economic and humanitarian crisis in the country, reinforced by international sanctions, is also contributing to violence. One of the cases that Ameeri handled was of a woman who was physically abused by her husband who became a drug addict and suffered a mental illness after losing employment. To make ends meet, the woman sought employment as a house cleaner, but was also forced to sell her body as well to bring home food. During counseling, they found she was cutting herself in response to the situation. According to the U.N. Development Programme, nearly 700,000 people lost their jobs in Afghanistan, and food inflation has driven households deeper into debt. The high cost of food and inability of many families to afford them are also driving malnutrition rates in the country. “The situation is grim. This is arguably one of the fastest, largest scale, most comprehensive collective roll back of women rights based on their sex and their gender that we have seen pursued by an authority (in this case a de facto authority),” Alsalem said. Update, Nov. 25, 2022: This story has been updated for clarity.