Planned Budget (Total)
Other resources (non-core)
Country Indexes
outcome XM-DAC-41146-AFG_D_4.2
Women are represented and meaningfully participate in all peace and security, peace-building, recovery and humanitarian processes, including formal and informal peace negotiations and forums
ACO leveraged the political opportunities when Afghan women peacebuilders on all tracks (I, II and III) needed the support most. The intra-Afghan peace talks between the GIRoA and the Taliban include four women negotiators on the GIRoA negotiating team of 24 members. The presence of women leaders in Track I, and ensuring their linkages with women peacebuilders and networks at provinces a grassroots level (Tracks II, III) remained high in the visibility and the political landscape domestically and globally. Four women negotiators managed to include challenging agenda points on the gains on women’s rights and leadership in the agenda of negotiations in Doha as well as keep the achievements high among the international community’s advocacy and lobby. ACO’s partnerships with the SMP and HCNR that solidified policies, mechanisms and enhanced process ensured women’s participation in peacebuilding priorities remained central. Other partnerships with the WPS line-ministries included partnerships with the MoIA to strengthen efforts on enabling and safe working conditions for women serving within the ANP, progressing of NAP Phase II (2019-22) with MoFA, through inter-ministerial engagement. Results were complemented by partnerships with women networks, CSO and thinks tanks to produce thematic tools, analytical briefs and data driven innovative platforms to inform a multitrack peace process that enabled grassroot /provincial women voices to directly inform formal decision-making spaces, and the Track I peace talks in Doha. The revolutionary hackathon #peacethreads campaign, Policy Space Dialogues (after collapse of the GIRoA), Initiation of establishing the young women gross-generational peacebuilding network, developments of the digital platforms of code4peace and “Bishnaw” Women Peace Circle with monthly fact-based peace briefs, “Sustaining Peace briefs” that were developed together with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Hard Talk series (bringing together national WPS experts and international community) are the flagships support for Afghan women’s peace movement before and after the Taliban takeover. Highlights also include finalization of the Gender Sensitive Conflict Analyses that UN Women together with UNAMA worked. Other knowledge products of 2021 include “Status of women in the ANP” research paper. On Humanitarian space, since May 2021, Afghanistan has been operating in a complex emergency scenario resulting from dramatic consequences of COVID 19, and the exacerbated tensions and territorial power shifts. While all population groups across the country have been drastically impacted by this change, the consequences for women and girls have been most significant due to the marginalization they already face in Afghanistan. Since the Taliban takeover on 15th August 2021 and the subsequent full international troop withdrawal, the situation in Afghanistan has been marked by escalating gender inequality and the need for humanitarian intervention more broadly. Restrictions across the country are also preventing women from participating in humanitarian interventions. A large number of women-led CSOs and women workers are reporting that they can no longer provide life- saving protection support. This is because of recent announcements by the de facto authorities, as well self- censoring by women out of fear and insecurity and increasing family-imposed restrictions on women and girls due to fear of peer policing. In 2021, ACO leveraged its influence to strengthen accountability and capacity towards gender in humanitarian action in the humanitarian response in Afghanistan by ensuring gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is central to the 2022 Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan, Humanitarian Needs Overview and the HCT Interim Protection Strategy
outcome XM-DAC-41146-AFG_D_6.1
The capacity of the government and stakeholders is strengthened to assess the progress in implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, and other global normative and policy frameworks
As COVID-19 swiped the world, UN Women ACO shifted their approach from reactive to proactive to effectively including to its ongoing programs COVID-19 prevention elements. To this end, UN Women ACO carried out the below activities: - UN Women ACO continues support Afghanistan’s participation in international forums and intergovernmental processes. Afghanistan’s representation and contribution in international strategic forums and intergovernmental processes not only holds the Government accountable to its obligation, but also necessitates the use of standard gender indicators and coordinated monitoring of gender commitments of sectoral plans. To this end The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and Ministry of Women’s Affairs led and coordinated the process of government representation at CSW 65 virtual session, in coordination with UN Women,. - Part of advocacy for normative; UN Women ACO to mark the International Women’s Day, with year themed “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world” , UN Women Afghanistan came together with various Afghan government entities, and women’s rights activists to recognize Afghan women’s pivotal role of Afghan women in meaningfully engaging with their families, their communities and their country to move forward in achieving inclusive peace, amidst a pandemic, leveraging the opportunities of the historic intra- Afghan peace talk. In specific terms, UN Women. - Women had also become increasingly visible in other forms of public life, including as human rights defenders, not only in governmental roles but also as advocates in civil society organizations (CSOs), UN women ACO produced 16 public art murals in the eight geographical zones of Afghanistan as part of the #SalamforSafety campaign on preventing COVID-19 from spreading further. The overall aim of this initiative was to promote images of strong Afghan women encouraging their fellow women and men to refrain from the usual greeting practices and embrace the traditional Afghan greeting of “Salam” as a powerful way of combatting the spread of COVID-19. #SalamforSafety features visuals that encourage people to practice social distancing and wear facemasks. - U N Women Afghanistan launched a call for ideas encouraging Afghan women artists or women with artistic abilities -be it activists, community leaders, journalists, frontline human/civil rights defenders, to submit their proposed artwork to appear on face mask. A mix of Afghan women artists, UN Women- Afghanistan and donors selected the top 5 designs for the campaign, based on a pre-defined criterion. The selected designs will be printed on 400.000 masks. It is envisaged that the facemasks will be disseminated to achieve (I) social change (through building a masks-based movement to challenge norms about the role, place, and future of women in Afghanistan – famous women and men from different walks of life such as the member of the parliament, civil society, international organizations, embassies representatives, journalists, Sports, Politicians, Artists, Technology, Police, Government, and Semi Government representatives wearing the masks - iconic style will be photographed), and (II) support vulnerable women and community who do not have access to facemasks such as the women in the protection centres, internal displaced people, shelters, etc. The production of face masks is cancelled after a thoroughly review of the management team for varieties of reasons including the change context after Taliban sieged power, re-configuration of the priorities, timing, and costing issues
outcome XM-DAC-41146-AFG_O_1
Drive more effective and efficient UN system coordination and strategic partnerships
UN Women continued to convene and facilitate various platforms in driving effective and efficient UN system coordination and strategic partnerships, In specific terms: Despite an unprecedented Humanitarian, political, economic and women’s rights crisis, UN Women ACO succeeded in both strengthening its existing partnerships and expanding its donor’s portfolio. Over 8 million USD were raised in the last 4 months from new donors either through direct and bilateral agreements or through joint contribution to the Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan. Strong internal coordination and leverage of UNW internal partnerships expertise at country, regional and HQ levels. The ACO partnerships team has closely coordinated with partnerships focal points in RO and HQ to provide regular update on the partnership’s needs, discuss potential engagement opportunities to leverage (e.g. annual consultations with major donors at HQ), and align on best practices In addition, all ongoing partnerships were confirmed and two of them will be increased in 2022. The GiHA WG has leveraged its influence in the humanitarian coordination system, consistently promoting gender equality and the participation and empowerment of women, girls, men and boys of all diversities in the cross-sectoral humanitarian response, though capacity building initiatives, the development of tools and guidance notes and produced gender data. In particular, the GiHA WG, provide substantive feedback and gender analysis to key strategic documents, such as the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) and the Interim protection Strategy (IPS). Additionally, in August 2021, the GiHA WG became a member of the Humanitarian Access Working Group and is since then has actively contributed to discussions on women staff humanitarian access and raised incidents reported by GiHA WG members. In 2021, UN Women became the new co-lead of the sub-group on Feedback and Response Mechanism and remains an active member of the AAP WG, Protection Cluster and GBVSC and has regularly attended their meetings and provided inputs to their strategic documents. UN Women also co-lead the Permanent Secretariat of the Women, Peace and Security Working Group, to ensure that the results of its programming lead to tangible gains in the lives of women and girls across Afghanistan, from the local and provincial to the national level, including and especially during this period of COVID 19 and under the Taliban rule, post mid-August. UN Women also convenes the Gender Donor Coordination Group that aim at providing a broad range of existing and prospective donors with an update on women’s rights status in Afghanistan and on UN Women’s adjusted programming in Afghanistan. The first ever WEE National Working Group was also established during this reporting period in close coordination with the Ministry of Women Affairs. Following the abolishment of MoWA under the de Facto authority, no further progress has been made with this working group. UN Women also continued to convene regular coordination meeting with UNAMA and has hosted /convened several rounds of consultations in a form of ‘Virtual Policy Spaces’ after Taliban take over on sanctions with Afghan women leaders and activist inside and outside the country. ‘Virtual Policy Spaces’ were held in the lead-up to the renewal of the mandate of the Monitoring and Sanctions Committee for Afghanistan in late Q4 with an aim to inform Sanction Committee on opinions and recommendations on renewal, partial renewal of full lifting of the sanctions and their respective consequences on women on the ground. UN Women was heavily engaged in the finalization of the UNSDCF (2022 - 2025) with the other UN agencies through the PMT and UNCT. With the changed context following the fall of the government, the UNCT initiated development of a Transitional Engagement Framework (TEF) to which UN Women fully participated to ensure gender is a priority and mainstreamed especially in the posed humanitarian context and new regime where the rights and the needs of women and girls is still contested.
outcome XM-DAC-41146-AFG_O_2
Institutionalize a strong culture of results-based management, reporting, knowledge management and evaluation
UN Women has continued to build a strong practice on results-based management, reporting, knowledge management and evaluation. In this reporting year, ACO has organized and coordinated a series of capacity building trainings on results-based reporting, strategic planning, gender based evaluation and effective use of internal monitoring systems including RMS, Atlas, DAMs. . This have been pertinent to strategic level planning alongside timely submission and approval of the 2022 Afghanistan Country Office Annual Workplan and reports for 2021.
outcome XM-DAC-41146-AFG_O_3
Mobilize and leverage adequate resources
In 2021, expanding its solid resource based established through multi-year agreements with key strategic donors, the ACO mobilized 8 MUSD from four different donors (Australia, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland), including three new donors (Austria, Germany and Switzerland). This significant increase in resource mobilized is the result of a successful three-fold RM approach based on: i) The design and implementation of a prioritized outreach and engagement plan; ii) Strengthened engagement efforts; iii) Combined local and global engagementShowing 11 - 15 of 16