Partnership between policewomen and civil society as a strategy to prevent violence against women Paper presented at the International Islamic Police Women’s Conference, Kabul Afghanistan, October 21-25, 2007
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First of all lets analyze the importance of police in a post conflict and in many parts conflict situation of Afghanistan, what are our expectations as members of afghan society and what is available including resources, intellectuals, assistance. By policing we do not only mean crime control, but social order, human rights, law enforcement and justice too come in place. Afghanistan has a strong and just constitution; we need to analyze what are the gaps in law enforcement that we are not able to ensure equality for women and men as guaranteed by the constitution? Is it only the responsibility of 60,000 police forces to ensure that 25-30 millions of Afghans are treated equally and with justice? When we talk about civil society, we are actually talking about people’s society and society is a common shelter and home for every individual (women and men). When individuals as citizens have rights and want to benefit from state level laws and regulation, simultaneously they have a responsibility to ensure effective implementation of the law on their societies, on themselves and try to approach the government when they need government’s support and guidance in such issues. Suggestion However, in a civil society, there are some groups or organizations that are actively involved in improving people’s lives in different sectors and trying to raise individuals and people’s concerns to the state and government; they are called civil society organizations. For the past 20 years, we have seen that these CSOs have played very important roles in relief and development of Afghanistan, whether in neighboring countries or inside Afghanistan. When we talk about development, security is the first pillar of development and for individuals in a civil society there are two kinds of security 1) public/national security that everyone living in a society needs to be secure from any force or threat against their lives and wealth however; CSOs have an important role to ensure that women and children have social protection at the community and societal levels therefore, having policewomen is vital in this process. However, having only policewomen will not solve the whole problems women have in afghan society, but there has to be a strong partnership between CSOs and the women police so that women police get the information and support they need from local communities to help them. This partnership should be much more than issuing press releases and asking for more women in police by CSO but the link should be strong and regular interaction should take place among both. Trust and good relationship among CSOs and policewomen is the key to success in this process, being a tribal oriented afghan community feel reluctant to approach police and particularly when it comes to issues like violence against women or women’s issues, Afghans try to solve it at the family and community level and do not approach police. Since the social status of women have not been equal to men , and due to cultural barriers on women’s involvement in social life, its also difficult for communities to trust policewomen and be able to share their problems with them and most importantly it is rare that those communities will let their women to join the police force. So this dilemma and critical situation needs the support of CSOs to strengthen not only the community’s relation with policewomen but also depicting positive images of policewomen through mass media to local communities. Criticizing the police forces and policewomen does not help CSOs to encourage them to help with the local communities but its important to understand the these people in police too have come from the same communities and must have similar or more problems. It is important that CSOs being the observers of peace building in the country should highlight the issues faced by police women and alert the communities about those issues particularly from a women’s triple role ; productive, reproductive and community support. Since CSOs have access to international support and have human resources, they need to support the policewomen training them on human rights, gender sensitivities and social protection needs for women and girls. We need to work with our police to eliminate the punishment mentality to welfare mentality and a shift in paradigms of looking at social order and social protection through community policing. Only by working with women, violence against women will not decrease but has increased in many instances. So its important for CSOs to work with the whole police force and the local communities to identify the root causes of violence against women and together with people find a sustainable solution to solve them. |