http://www.unesco.org/education/introduction_en.pdf

Another UNESCO publication about Safia Ama Jan

Following up on the UNESCO article, I searched a few wiki links discussing who Safia Ama Jan was, and why the Taliban wanted her dead.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safia_Ahmed-jan

Safia Ahmed-jan (alternative published English transliterations: Safia Ahmed Jan, Safia Ama Jan, Safia Amajan) (1941–25 September 2006) was an Afghan women's rights advocate and an outspoken critic of the Taliban for the latter's suppression of women. During the period of fundamentalist rule, she stayed in Afghanistan to secretly teach women^[1].

At the time of her assassination on 25 September 2006 she was the provincial director of the Ministry of Women's Affairs in Kandahar province, a position she had held for five years. Previously, she was a teacher and high school principal.^[2] She was killed in front of her home in the provincial capital, Kandahar, by two men on a motorcycle.^[3][4]

Of her, U.S. President George W. Bush said, "She was a leader who wanted to give young girls an education in Afghanistan. She was a person who served her government. She was a person who cared deeply about the future of the country."^[5]

Well folks, thanks for hanging in so far and reading along, learning as I do about the plight of women and children in Afghanistan, and the ongoing efforts to raise awareness and education.

This week has been declared Global Action Week on Education by UNESCO. Read on!

From http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=53049&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Global Action Week: zoom on Afghanistan

23-04-2007 (UNESCO)

To mark Global Action Week, 23-29 April, UNESCO is organizing a photo exhibition in homage to leading Afghan defender of girls’ education, Safia Ama Jan, who was murdered in 2006 for her activism.

A UNESCO study on violence against education personnel, dedicated to her memory, will be launched on April 27.

UNESCO is mobilizing its stakeholders for this annual initiative in favour of Education for All. The theme for the 2007 action is “Education as a Human Right”.

Workshops, public rallies, conferences, debates, TV documentaries, media training, the publication of advocacy materials and exhibitions are among the activities planned worldwide by UNESCO field offices. Partners include ministries, sister agencies, the media, schools and civil society.

Global Action Week is organized by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a UNESCO partner. Actors at all levels of education are urged to sign up and take part in order to promote Education for all worldwide.

“Everyone has the right to education” according to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNESCO is mandated to work with education in its many aspects, and places the language of rights at the very heart of its efforts, with emphasis on inclusion, lifelong learning and non-discrimination.

Hello to all! I've found an excellent article that can give me some opportunity for dialogue here, and is directly relevant to our efforts. Coincidentally, Mitch's blog entry today addresses the same thing, from this side of the fundraising efforts. Honestly, bizarrely coincidental; he was drafting the blog as I started proofing this article! Without further adieu, from: http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/22093/

Afghan Officials Concerned About Effectiveness of Foreign Aid

By Sayed Zafar Hashemi - Afghan government officials are concerned about the effectiveness of foreign aid as Congress considers a White House request for $11.8 billion in U.S. aid over the next two years.

Washington, D.C. - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - infoZine - Afghan officials want foreign assistance to be channeled through government institutions to ensure compliance with the country's national development strategy.

More than 70 percent of the aid provided to Afghanistan over the past five years was channeled through a multitude of U.N. agencies, international contractors and non-governmental organizations.

Mohammad Ashraf Haidari, political counselor of the Afghan embassy in the United States, said the international community understands that ownership of the rebuilding process by the government and people of Afghanistan is the key to its success.

Haidari said the Afghanistan Compact, signed with international partners in 2006, will prevent waste and help aid groups cooperate.

He said that the U.S. had provided Afghanistan with more than $14 billion in reconstruction assistance since 2001, when the coalition forces toppled the Taliban and made way for the international community to help rebuild Afghanistan.

"As at the beginning, our state institutions were extremely weak and did not have the capacity to implement and deliver aid to people," Haidari said.

He said Afghanistan will never be able to rebuild on its own unless the international community gives aid through Afghanistan's ministries and helps them improve their own skills.

"We need to be in the driver's seat, not outside the car when it comes to addressing Afghanistan's rebuilding priorities," Haidari said.

He said that aid organizations are not always cost-effective, as they have huge operating costs that sometimes amount to more than 40 percent of the aid. If that amount was spent on building the working skills of Afghan ministries, the assistance would be far more effective.

"It would have been delivered to the targeted beneficiaries based on our own priorities, outlined in our national development strategy," Haidari said.

He added that the government of Afghanistan has now established a monitoring and coordinating mechanism to help the international community channel its assistance through the government institutions.

The Joint Coordinating and Monitoring Body met recently met in Berlin to discuss how to best coordinate international aid in Afghanistan. "We hope this institution will be further developed and used as an effective mechanism to accomplish our intended goals," Haidari said.

The Afghanistan Compact sets out an ambitious program for Afghan development over the next five years. With the support of its international partners, the government is committed to specific and achievable goals in security, governance, economic and social development and counter-narcotics.

Spokesmen for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development said they would find out if the U.S. would be willing to channel aid through the Afghan government. But, after several weeks, they did not provide the information.

Lynne Weil, communications director for Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that U.S. funds appropriated for peacekeeping operations are used to cover Afghan National Army salaries.

She said that the source for security forces funding has shifted from the State Department to the Defense Department.

"In addition, Chairman Lantos has expressed his intention to reauthorize the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act, which authorizes security and development assistance," she said.

Weil said that the United States and its allies have very good odds for success. Yet the burden of this success is not being equally shouldered among these allies.

While NATO has technically taken over most of the Afghanistan mission, she said, some NATO countries have taken part in a "half-hearted, unsatisfactory and shabby fashion."

"It is an outrage that this gigantic military alliance cannot provide the troops necessary to win this eminently winnable battle," Weil said.

Weil said that it is entirely unacceptable that NATO commanders are left to beg for troops from countries, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain. It is an outrage that only troops from the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are deployed to the most hazardous spots, she said.

She said Afghanistan has made great strides along the path to democracy. It now has a freely elected president and parliament, the beginnings of a self-sustaining national army and some legitimate economic development.

Weil said that the country is a long way from being fully democratic, stable and at peace. Opium production has soared, warlords sit in the parliament and the anti-terror fighters and peacekeeping forces hear daily of a possible new offensive against international troops this spring by the Taliban.

"If the United States does not want to lose Afghanistan again, our long-term political, economic, and military commitments to the country must be beyond question," she said.

Brian Maka, spokesman for the office of the assistant secretary of defense, said 26,000 U.S. service members are operating in Afghanistan.

From Sep. 11, 2001, through December, the U.S. has obligated $70 billion for the military in Operation Enduring Freedom, Maka said.

Former Afghan Interior Minster Ali Ahmad Jalali, a distinguished professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies of the National Defense University, said that the Afghanistan Compact asks $20 billion for 10 years.

"However, in the time compact was signed, [the] situation was different than how it is today," he said. "Afghanistan was more stable."

Jalali said the new budget of $11.8 billion that the U.S. is allocating for next two years, includes only $3 billion is for reconstruction. The rest is for strengthening security forces, and he exclaimed, "which is not a very significant increase!"

"From [the] beginning, capacity was a big problem," he said, adding that only 5 percent of funds provided by the international community was channeled through the government of Afghanistan.

In addition, it led to a brain drain from governmental institutions to NGOs and contractors. Many highly skilled governmental employees sought to work with the contractors instead of the government because there they were well paid, he said.

"Capacity is kind of commodity. If an NGO or contractor can buy and hire it, government can do the same, provided that they have resources," Jalali said.

The other reason to channel the aid through international contractors was the existence of corruption in state institutions, he said.

"The solution is to put the Afghan government in the driver's seat." he said, adding that the international community should also find ways to address corruption and resolve it.





Alas, it is late, and the dialogue will have to wait until tomorrow.
Cheers!
~Michelle

Here's a very exciting article about education for young girls. I chose it because it specifically states the things these girls are learning, and the difference it is making in their lives. It is incredible to believe that a girl in Afghanistan has a better lease on life simply by learning to count to 100. Read on.

From http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_38434.html

Community-based schools bring hope to Afghanistan’s remote settlements

© UNICEF Jalalabad/2007

With the encouragement of her father, Hakima, 9, attends a UNICEF-supported, community-based school in Afghanistan.

By Sabine Dolan

The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child will be the theme of the 51st session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women from 26 February to 9 March 2007. Here is one in a series of related stories.

NEW YORK, USA, 23 February 2007 – Hakima, 9, only recently came to know about her country and its people.

She was born at the Bajawur Refugee Camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but nearly two years ago her family had to repatriate to the village of Wuch Tangee in Afghanistan’s Beshood District.

Hakima was lucky, though. Her father encouraged her to attend a community-based school in their village.

Indeed, she feels that she is the luckiest of the 10 siblings in her family – particularly since her two elder sisters are too shy to attend school due to their older age. She is proud to have learned how to make words out of letters and count all the way to 100. She smiles as she writes on the blackboard to the sound of enthusiastic applause from her classmates.

Ogata Initiative supports education

Hakima enjoys school and doesn’t have to worry about the daily chores of collecting water and firewood. When she grows up, she wants to become a teacher.

Her success has been made possible by the Ogata Initiative, a regional comprehensive development assistance programme established by the Government of Japan and supported by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education and UNICEF.

© UNICEF Jalalabad/2007

Afghan communities are increasingly investing in the education of both girls and boys despite hardships.

The initiative provided education opportunities to nearly 3,000 children in 2006 alone through support for 50 community-based schools – including teacher training and salaries, provision of learning materials and, in a few cases, classroom construction. Working with local communities, the Afghan education authorities have been able to reach out to scattered settlements on behalf of girls like Hakima who would otherwise never have been encouraged or even had the choice to go to school.

“According to the Ministry of Education’s regulations, primary schools should be located no more than 3 km from a village,” explains UNICEF External Relations Officer Roshan Khadivi. “However, there are still many areas that do not have schools within [that] radius – and even this specific distance has been identified as too long for a child of primary school age to commute, especially for girls.

“If parents do not think that their children will be safe in or en route to school, they will keep their children at home,” adds Ms. Khadivi.

Encouraging signs

The steady rise in the number of community-based schools and the increase in attendance, particularly among girls, are encouraging. Communities are increasingly investing in the education of girls and boys despite hardships and an element of conservatism fuelled by an insurgency movement in Afghanistan.

Prospects for the future are bright if girls like Hakima are able to fulfil their ambitions and their parents can provide the protective environment they need.

“The challenge is how to reach those children, especially girls, who are still not in school and ensure that children enrolled in classes do not begin to drop out,” says Ms. Khadavi. “The efforts we are making to improve the curriculum and quality of teaching – and our work with others on the ‘healthy schools’ initiative that will hopefully make the physical environment of schools more child-friendly – will do much to maintain and improve attendance rates.”

Hello again! I've found a few articles to share about various efforts to aid Afghans. This blog is meant to cover quite a variety of issues: literacy and education, women's rights, social and health issues, and environmentalism. It is all tied together, believe it or not, and I hope I can provide enough resources to underline the relevance of this holistic approach.
While the scope of this blog is wide, it is intended to keep us focused on our goal of raising funds, in the hope of giving Afghans a better future.

From UNICEF, I've found the following:

UNICEF and partners come together to help reduce maternal mortality in Afghanistan

© UNICEF Afghanistan/2007

New programmes and partnerships are being launched in Afghanistan to help ensure that newborns like this one will be able to grow up with their mothers.

By Fawad Sahil

KABUL, Afghanistan, 2 April 2007 – One in nine Afghan women dies during or shortly after pregnancy, accounting for one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Kabul’s Malalai Maternity Hospital, one of the busiest in Afghanistan delivering 80 to 100 babies a day, is working to ensure that more women live to see their children grow up.

Since the fall of Taliban in 2001, UNICEF has provided much-needed support to this hospital through facility renovation, capacity building, training for doctors and midwives and providing supplies and medicine. They have also instituting a wide-ranging safe motherhood information campaign in collaboration with community groups.

The hospital is an important training centre, where obstetric care providers become master trainers and in turn help to upgrade the obstetric skills of hundreds of doctors and midwives across the country.

"This support has had significant impact on pregnant women and has saved so many lives," says Dr. Mirafzoon Meher Nisar of the Maternity Unit.

For more information, visit http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_39281.html



Perhaps a little overkill, but I thought I'd add this entire article, from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/afghanistan_38129.html

23 January 2007: Afghans determined to rebuild, no matter the obstacles

© UNICEF Afghanistan/2006

UNICEF External Relations Officer Roshan Khadivi.

By Roshan Khadivi

UNICEF External Relations Officer Roshan Khadivi offers personal reflections on the progress she has seen for children in Afghanistan since her first assignment there more than five years ago.

KABUL, Afghanistan, 23 January 2007 – Prior to my first trip to Afghanistan in 2001, I remember a time when the horrible pictures of group killings in Kabul football stadiums reached the rest of the world. News reports spoke of oppressive restrictions and daily torture of innocent people. Worldwide, many wondered how things would turn out here.

I came to this country in late 2001 on a short assessment mission, followed by a two-year assignment beginning in 2002. I have been back in Afghanistan for about month, and this most recent visit has been a real opportunity to see how things have changed.

Progress on the ground

Kabul is still one of the main hubs for the journalists. There are the many regulars and then there are the ‘firefighters’ – reporters who come and go on three-day visits. The stories that seem to get the most media coverage are those about security in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

There is no doubt about the security and access problems here, but there also has been significant progress on the ground. Somehow, stories of these extraordinary works hardly make it to the main news bulletins around the globe.

For example, more than 4.89 million children in Afghanistan are going to school and 48,000 women, even in remote villages, attend 1,782 literacy centres – astounding for a country where just few years ago, education was banned and any progress for youth seemed unattainable.

Education strengthens communities

My friends who live outside Afghanistan always seem amazed when I talk about UNICEF’s support of literacy courses for women in Kandahar Province, where over 4,000 individuals will learn basic reading and writing skills and gain access to vocational training this year alone.

This is because to outsiders, Kandahar is a place described in dire terms on the evening news, a place filled with insurgents. They have no idea that despite the efforts of those who try to intimidate people through the burning of schools or attacks on civilians, communities are more than eager to send their children to school or attend literacy classes in order to improve their lives.

The universal saying that it is always easier to destroy something than to repair it applies very much in this case – especially after so many years of war and destruction of infrastructure and morale.

Afghans know from real experience that war and fear do not work. They have seen destruction on a daily basis and have experienced the pain of losing loved ones. They know that when people in a community become strong by educating themselves, negative forces can no longer use fear or violence to stop them.

Extraordinary changes

From what I have seen, despite the daily challenges, people in Afghanistan are more determined than ever to move forward. They know that by educating their children they are building a foundation for a country that is based on progress and peace, not the destruction of the past.

In 2007, with support from local communities, UNICEF staff members are planning to immunize Afghan children against polio in hitherto inaccessible areas. They plan to reach out to ensure that over 400,000 girls be will enrolled in schools. They aim to improve the quality of education, in part through the building of 200 cost-effective schools around the country. In addition, over 62,500 women of all ages will be enrolled in literacy courses.

Extraordinary things do and will continue to take place in this country.

Since my first visit to Afghanistan, extraordinary changes have taken place – this despite the attacks of those who fear peace and progress in a nation whose children are as deserving as those in the rest of the world.

Stay tuned... more to come!
~Michelle

Inaugural post!

At last, here we are; thanks to all who have visited. This blog is intended to be a quick reference on current events surrounding Afghanistan and the Goal: Aid in Afghanistan project. For now, I'll be the only one adding articles to the blog, although others from the GAIA working group will eventually be adding their own articles, thoughts, and opinions.

Cheers!
~Michelle