Against All Odds: The Courage and Resistance of Afghan Women
Since August 2021, Afghan women have faced unprecedented restrictions on their rights and participation in public life. Yet despite these challenges, they continue to sustain their families, communities, and local economies through often invisible forms of labour, leadership, and resilience.
Since the Taliban took power in 2021, Afghan women have been stripped of their fundamental rights and excluded from public life. Yet they continue to support their families and communities.
With technical support from WILPF Geneva and CARE International, and financial support from Norway, WILPF Afghanistan has conducted the study Between the Public and the Private Sphere: Afghan Women’s Life- and Community-Sustaining Labour. The research foregrounds Afghan women’s own experiences and lived realities, challenging narratives that reduce them to passive recipients of humanitarian aid, detached from questions of power, politics, and agency.
At a time when Afghan women’s voices are being systematically excluded from international decision-making processes, this event presents research-based knowledge and concrete recommendations for a more just, inclusive, and accountable international engagement.
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The launch event will bring together donors, diplomats, UN agencies, humanitarian and development actors, policymakers, researchers, and women’s rights advocates to explore the report’s key findings and recommendations.
The discussion will examine how international policies, funding, and programming can better support the rights, leadership, and meaningful participation of Afghan women. And how international stakeholders continue to shape responses to the crisis in Afghanistan, this event offers a timely opportunity to engage with evidence generated by Afghan women themselves, reflect on current approaches, and explore recommendations that support more inclusive, rights-based, and gender-responsive policies and interventions.
Agenda:
14:00 - Welcome and Opening Remarks by Norway
14:10 - Remarks from Care Norway
14:15 - Presentation of the research
14:30 - Key Findings from the research
14:45 – Interactive Dialogue and Q&A
Speakers:
- Bjørn Staurset Jahnsen, Norway’s Special Representative to Afghanistan
- Nikolai Walderhaug, Second Secretary (Afghanistan), Royal Norwegian Embassy Islamabad
- Jamila Afghani, President, WILPF Afghanistan
- Negina Yari, Program Director, WILPF Afghanistan
- Nazifa Jalali, Director of Dialogue Hub and Member of Afghan Women Coordination Umbrella
- Eman Ghazniwal, WILPF Afghanistan Member