Peace & Democracy

This book, Scratching the Surface: Democracy, Traditions, Gender provides an inside to the multi-faceted nature of democracy and its complex demands. It looks into greater detail, the conceptual anomalies, the structural inequalities, and ethical defects, especially in the context of South Asian countries.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung and National Commission on the Status of Women jointly organized one day round table meeting on 12th April 2013, where more than 22 eminent women from civil society, women organizations, gender experts, media, EU representatives and government have participated and actively took part in the discussion.

At present, Afghanistan has turned into a focal point of agreements between Western and Eastern countries. These Strategic Partnership Agreements (SPAs) that Afghanistan has signed with many countries of the world, including Germany are deemed as vital achievement for the country.

“Sometimes it seems as if it was all part of a big plan”, says Sulayman Qardesh. He smiles at his band colleague Siddique Ahmad. Number three, drummer Mujtaba Habibi, couldn’t come for our interview. It was a perfect match when these three boys of different origin happened to meet and found Afghanistan’s first indie rock band, the “Kabul Dreams”.

German involvement in Afghanistan did not begin with the attacks of September 11. In the 60s and 70s, Afghanistan was a key aspect of West German development aid. Aid efforts are still fondly remembered today, as is evident from the technical centres (Technikum) in Paktia and Kandahar.

Some observers see incompatibilities between democracy, human rights and gender equality, on the one hand, and a world in which religion plays an active role in public affairs, on the other. Others ask whether it is useful to see religion as the nemesis of gender equality, and secularism as others ask whether it is useful to see religion as the nemesis of gender equality, and secularism as the precondition for it.

In December 2011, ten years after the Petersberg Conference, the future of Afghanistan will be discussed anew. How can Afghanistan increasingly become militarily, politically and economically more independent? And where does the Afghan parliament and civil society stand in this year’s Bonn Conference? Will they be included? Or will they – as is so often the case in international conferences – be excluded?

Never will women’s rights be sacrificed in talks with the Taliban and never will the Afghan government close women shelters. These are the promises President Karzai made to his people in the middle of a heated debate on women’s rights in Afghanistan. These are two major commitments. Judging by the overall political trends in the country, it might not be easy to stick to them.