Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO) was founded in 2009. The Organization aims to improve the human rights condition of Afghan citizens, contribute to the country’s democratic development, promote understanding and compliance with international humanitarian law in situation of armed conflict, design cultural and artistic initiatives to foster inter-ethnic and inter-community peace and communication and develop public memory and recollection of millions of war victims as an antidote to the deep-seated culture of impunity and the profoundly ingrained ethos of war and violence in the country.

Vision

AHRDO works towards realizing a peaceful, democratic, pluralistic, tolerant, free of fear and impunity, and a just Afghanistan.

Mission

• - Promote democracy and democratic processes through participatory and bottom-up engagements with a broad range of actors focusing on marginalized groups, and communities that are often disengaged, disempowered, and excluded. In this context, women, the youths, marginalized communities, survivors, and families of war victims are the focus of their programs. Innovative approaches and initiatives such as legislative theatre, theatre of oppressed, and memorialization are employed to achieve the objective of democratic development and consolidation;
• - Create safe spaces for inter-community dialogue and communication as a mechanism for fostering durable peace and solidarity among communities cut-off by social boundary-making, geography, misperception, misinformation, and miscommunication in environments highly affected by conflict, insecurity, and trust-deficits;
• - Collect, preserve and protect the memories of Afghan war victims of the past decades to combat institutionalized amnesia and promote a policy of remembrance among the Afghan public to prevent the recurrence of violence;
• - Collect, record, compile and publish narratives, stories, and tales of survivors, families, and relatives of war victims as fundamental sources for collective reflection, rethinking and fostering public understanding and dialogue among Afghans on the root causes of war and the construction of a durable peace;
• - Empower marginalized/vulnerable groups such as war victim by providing capacity-building through training and technical assistance to enable them to mobilize, advocate and campaign for their rights to truth and justice and reparation;
• - Support among marginalized groups the broader understanding of fundamental human rights concepts, values, and norms through the creation and use of artistic and literary works with substantive human rights orientation and notions.