Kay Niedermayer, Girls' Education in Afghanistan: Alternative NGO Approaches

Girls' Education in Afghanistan: Alternative NGO Approaches

By Kay Niedermayer

Afghanistan is a country left in shambles after decades of war and conflict. This has left many groups, communities, and organizations puzzled as to where to begin rebuilding a torn nation. Afghanistan's economy is dependent on foreign investment, especially on aid. However, some question the approach and effectiveness of such aid which sometimes lacks a focused intention. There are currently many NGOs working in Central Asia on relief aid campaigns, although many of these relief campaigns focus on short-term projects and not long-term development projects such as education. Investing in education and especially that of the female population has proven to be one of the most effective ways to increase the social, economic, and cultural wellbeing of a community and therefore a nation. The Central Asia Institute (CAI) and Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan) are two NGOs which aim at a more personal and direct approach to supporting an Afghan-led campaign for girls’ education in the region.

The CAI and CW4WAfghan approaches to education projects in the region are centered on building relationships and enabling the Afghan people to create sustainable community development projects. This means listening to the needs and voices of the Afghan people. There are many other similarities to these two NGO initiatives including the use of books as a way to promote their cause. However, there are many differences as well and these will be outlined in a comparative analysis. These NGOs are examples of some of the initiatives going on in the region and are not single-handedly responsible for the amazing progress of education in the region. This being said, after more than a decade of work in the region, they have proven to be both successful and valuable to the advancement of education and the empowerment of Afghan people through an approach focused on building relationships, partnerships, and sustainable community-oriented projects.

Naomi Moker, Madres de la Plaza de Mayo and Stolen Sisters

Placing awareness of missing and disappeared persons on an international and local agenda: Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina & the Stolen Sisters in Canada as displayed by Sisters in Spirit

By Naomi Moker

Ford Falcons without license plates slide through the streets like sharks. A fleet of them would park outside an apartment or a home while large groups of armed security forces dressed in plain clothes stormed inside, tying up families, breaking furniture and dishes, pillaging, and ultimately, dragging away a son or a daughter” -Marguerite Bouvard, “Revolutionizing Motherhood”, 1994.

No person should ever be subject to a period of terror and violence, fearing they will be tied up and handed over to government officials, suggests human rights activist, Marguerite Bouvard. However, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Las Madres or The Mothers) and the Sisters in Spirit (SIS) are two specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that examine one single and growing concern worldwide: the disappearances of persons. Las Madres is a group of women in Argentina who developed as a political organization that examines the brutality of abductions and disappearances, advocating for the right of the public to know the whereabouts of people that have disappeared as a result of the Dirty War in Argentina in the late 1970s. SIS is a Canadian national organization that looks at the violence experienced by Aboriginal women across various provinces in Canada, where violence has led to missing women or murdered women. Both groups are examples of two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have risen out of people’s protests against the government’s inaction towards violence, the countless disappeared persons and the right to knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones. Both groups have also been crossing borders advocating and lobbying their governments for change while raising public awareness worldwide. Specifically, the two NGOS operate and unite by using a common language, using the terms “suffrage”, “violence” and “disappearances” to frame and place the severity of this issue on the international and global agenda. Both groups also utilize Amnesty International as a leverage point to propel this situation to the global scale, and SIS even uses the guidance of the National Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), as well.

Laura Husak, Women for Women International

Women for Women International: Raising Awareness and Support for Female Victims of War in the Democratic Republic of Congo

By Laura Husak

In 1994, a civil war began in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo 1). Beginning with the flood of millions of refugees trying to escape the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, the Congolese army and the Hutus militia have been fighting for power over the Congo ever since (Salbi 60). Guns, grenades, bombs, and an unconventional weapon: women are used to take down the enemy (Crisis in the Congo). Rape is used as a “weapon of war” (Crisis in the Congo).

In this paper I will discuss how Women for Women International (WfWI), a women’s rights and humanitarian organization, empowers women both locally in the Congo and internationally to raise awareness and support for female rape survivors in the Congo. I will begin by outlining WfWI as an organization, specifically looking at their mission and structure. Secondly, I will discuss why WfWI specifically work in the Congo, two of the main reasons being the use of rape as a “weapon of war” and the stigmatization attached to rape that leads many women to be abandoned by their families and communities (Crisis in the Congo). I will then go on to discuss how WfWI empowers Congolese women locally by providing vocational and business skills training, a space for dissent, and engaging both females and males in norm promotion. Lastly, I will discuss how WfWI involves women from the international community to support female rape victims in the Congo. WfWI does so by personalizing the issue, utilizing celebrity diplomacy, appealing to the interests of possible WfWI sponsors, and by providing the international community with specific initiatives for their involvement. In conclusion, I will discuss possible ways that WfWI can improve their work both in the Congo and internationally.

Anna Dipple, Microfinance, BRAC, and Issues of Women's Empowerment

Microfinance, BRAC, and Issues of Women’s Empowerment

By Anna Dipple

Microfinance is a relatively new phenomenon, and one that has taken the development world by storm. It has, in various instances, been touted as the cure-all for development issues in third world countries. The premise is that by giving impoverished populations access to microfinance services, such as small-scale loans, that they would not normally have access to, it will enable these populations to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship or good investment. Microfinance is especially marketed as a way to empower women and give them the resources to equalize the gender gap. Women are seen as prime loan receivers because of the high payback rates that have been recorded from women, as well as the assumed empowerment it will bring them. There are many organizations practicing many different methods of microfinance, including the common theme used by organizations such as BRAC (Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assessment Committee), where a small amount of money is lent to a group of women in the community, with relatively low interest rates. Although these organizations can often have some positive impacts on society, they are not cure-alls, and are often band-aid solutions as opposed to long-term poverty-alleviation practices. Issues such as the lack of women’s empowerment, the high risk of high debt rates in clients, as well as many others make microfinance a less-than-optimum solution for addressing development issues. Although microfinance can have a positive impact on the lives of women and the ultra-poor, it cannot be treated as a one-ticket solution for poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment in the developing world.

The idea of micro-credit is not a new one, but it is one that has recently been reestablished, and brought back into the limelight, in the 1970s by (most recognizably) the formation of the Grameen Bank. The Grameen bank was founded by Muhammad Yunus, the head of the Rural Economics program at the University of Chittagong, India, and came out of an action-research project based on developing a money lending system for the impoverished (Hulme, pg. 290). The Grameen Bank, as it is known today, originally started in Bangladesh and developed out of Yunus’s action project and into a full-blown microcredit organization that has over 2,565 branches throughout the world. Its focus is on giving out small-scale loans ($20-$40) to impoverished clients, especially women (women make up 97% of borrowers) who have unequal access to financial assistance, such as loans (grameenbank.com, 5 March 2011).

Camila Apablaza, Living in War: A Look at Child Soldiers

Living in war: a look at child soldiers

By Camila Apablaza

“[He] handed me the AK with two hands. I hesitated for a bit, but he pushed the gun against my chest. With trembling hands I took the gun, saluted him, and ran to the back of the line, still holding the gun but afraid to look at it. I had never held a gun that long before and it frightened me. The closest thing to it had been a toy gun made out of bamboo when I was seven.” ⁱ

Ishmael Beah, acclaimed author, is known for sharing his story as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier received praise and admiration from the international community as Beah’s story was shared with the world. Ishmael Beah’s life changed dramatically at the age of 12 when his village in Sierra Leone was invaded; after months of wandering his war-torn country he was recruited as a child soldier. By age of sixteen, he had escaped the life of combat, had undergone rehabilitation at a center filled with children like him, and had been asked to speak at a United Nations conference in New York City. At the UN conference Beah represented the voices of children in Sierra Leone and spoke of the effects of war on his country.ⁱⁱ Since graduating with a political science degree in 2004, Beah has become a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee. While Ishmael Beah’s story is known by many, the issue of child soldiers still has not received an appropriate level of attention. It wasn’t until the late 1970s conflict in Mozambique that the use of child soldiers was first brought to the attention of the international community, thus it remains relatively new to NGOs as do most human rights issues.ⁱⁱⁱ To argue that NGOs have failed to adopt this issue into their agendas is irrelevant as numerous organizations advocate for the abolition of child soldiers; progress made by the international community can be contested however. In addition, the gendered aspect of girls being forced into war has been disproportionately studied.

"War violates every right of a child -- the right to life, the right to be with family and community, the right to health, the right to development of personality and the right to be nurtured and protected."^iv Recruitment of children into war is not a human rights issue; it is one which destroys the utmost important foundations known to humanity—youth. The objective behind recruiting children into war is two dimensional, first to break the link between the abducted child and his or her family and also to initiate the child into rebel forces.^v Breaking this familial link not only impedes the child’s development but also breaks down societal ties. The abduction of children into warfare is systematically destroying communities and their structure, thus affecting the core of society both on the short term and long term basis. In addition, by restricting a child’s essential development, both socially and physically, their human capital is being jeopardized as well as all rights of the child are being violated.