On November 15, 2011, The Asia Foundation released findings from its seventh public opinion poll in Afghanistan, Afghanistan in 2011: A Survey of the Afghan People. Read more here.
Afghan tribal and village leaders tackle women's rights protection within Islam
Remarkable effort uses traditional community structures
Women's rights is a sensitive issue in Afghanistan, fueling feuds, revenge cycles, and wars. Men continue to make most decisions and control access to rights and justice. Our local staff approached the issue carefully and kept within local culture: patterns of power were analyzed in an attempt to understand where credibility and acceptance are centered in local decision-making. Our findings indicated that Islam and Muslim religious leaders—Imams, Mullahs, and Ulema—are the key authorities on moral grounds.
Using this as our point of departure, we worked together with a consultative group of Afghan religious scholars and the Ministry of Hajj and Islamic Affairs to develop 16 different informational booklets on women's rights in Islam. Religious leaders held weekly discussion groups with traditional decision-makers of local communities including tribal and village elders in which the concepts in the booklets were presented and discussed. To date, we've helped convene nearly 2,100 discussion groups, breaking new ground in the protection of Afghan women's rights. We will continue to work within existing traditional Afghan community structures to achieve a slow change in attitudes in order to protect women and advocate for their evolving rights.