RWI Afghanistan

Results 2023 Output 1. Increased number of academics/professionals from Afghanistan able to pursue a career focusing on human rights promotion and protection Four fellows were recruited in 2023, and all undertook the full fellowship programme. While all four were highly qualified from the start of the programme, evaluations confirmed that the fellowships helped them stay engaged in the world of human rights promotion and to do this in several high-level forums, and not least, in close cooperation with the visiting professor as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights i Afghanistan. Their research reports, blogs and public appearances, have been promoted widely, both in activities and through the RWI website and social media, and including through the visiting professors social media channels. Such promotion is also expected to contribute to improving their chances of continued careers in exile. Output 2: Increased scholarship and academic discourse on the human rights situation, including in relation to gender equality in Afghanistan. Three qualitative research reports have been produced in the programme by RWI fellows. Each fellow had at least monthly structured interactions with the visiting professor, the deputy director of research and education as their academic mentor, and/or scholars at RWI and Lund University or other academic institutes they engaged with during the year, including in the framework of the research conference in the programme. All four fellows contributed to numerous events, meeting, conferences and roundtables on human rights in Afghanistan. The visiting professor made hundreds of contributions to events, meetings, conferences, roundtables, etcetera. In addition to these, he undertook a number of missions eg to France, Norway, Denmark, the US, and the Netherlands, for advocacy with members state authorities, envoys, and regional or international bodies/forums, typically coupled with meetings with Afghans in diaspora, and often combined with contributions to academic or civil society initiatives on human rights in Afghanistan. Output 3: Increased access to concrete recommendations and potential solutions (derived from programme scholarship) to more effectively promote human rights, including gender equality, in Afghanistan. All official reports and oral statements of the Special Rapporteur were translated into both Dari and Pashto through the programme, and shared on the UN website. At least 18 events, meetings, conferences, roundtables etc., were used to share materials originating from or produced in the framework of the programme. The official reports and oral statements of the visiting professor in his UN mandate were highly referenced by stakeholders at all levels, both inside Afghanistan and outside Afghanistan. The high degree of interaction in his, and the OHCHR twitter accounts, as well as in RWI social media where these have been shared, apart from references to them in a variety of forums, including Afghan media channels, are part of the indications of this high degree. The translation into Afghan languages, through the programme, is expected to have increased this degree considerably, particularly among stakeholders in Afghanistan.

Programmets övergripande mål är att stärka demokrati, jämställdhet och respekt för de mänskliga rättigheterna i Afghanistan genom att bidra till bättre informerade strategier och initiativ hos viktiga intressenter som arbetar för att främja och skydda de mänskliga rättigheterna i Afghanistan. Programmet ämnar åstadkomma detta genom att bidra till: 1. Ökat antal akademiker/yrkesverksamma från Afghanistan som kan arbeta med att främja och skydda mänskliga rättigheter. 2. Ökade stipendier och akademisk diskurs om människorättssituationen, inklusive jämställdhet, i Afghanistan. 3. Ökad tillgång till konkreta rekommendationer och potentiella lösningar (som härrör från programstipendiater) för att mer effektivt främja mänskliga rättigheter, inklusive jämställdhet, i Afghanistan.