From Lauryn Oates...
In March 2009, news of the Shiite Personal Status Law reached international leaders gathered in London for the G20 conference, which included many donor nations to Afghanistan. A handful of the law’s 249 articles included restrictions on the rights of Afghan Shia women, and the issue exploded in the international press, galvanising heated responses from a variety of stakeholders.
An AREU study has sought to examine another angle of this story: the inception, preparation and parliamentary passage of the law. The aim has been to identify what this experience can illustrate about lawmaking in post-Bonn Afghanistan, and the political culture and capacity surrounding it. Respondents included MPs, Shia academics, civil society representatives, Shia women who demonstration against the law, a Supreme Court judge, and representatives of independent media outlets, the international community, and the Ministry of Justice.
The resulting report, A Closer Look — The Policy and Law-Making Process Behind the Shiite Personal Status Law, identifies a number of important irregularities in procedure, including that the final law was not formally passed by Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament, and notes that public inclusion was missing from the process. It also delivers a number of recommendations for improving procedures and better enforcing parliamentary rules, facilitating a peaceful pluralism in matters of fiqh (jurisprudence), and reforming Afghanistan’s single non transferable vote and political party systems.
The report is available for download at www.areu.org.af and will be available in hardcopy from the AREU office.
The report’s author Lauryn Oates is available for telephone interviews (English), as is a member of the research team (Dari). Representatives of the media seeking more information are encouraged to contact:
Jay Lamey, AREU Communication Editor: jay@areu.org.af or tel. 0795462011
The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) is an independent research organisation based in Kabul. AREU ’ s mission is to conduct high-quality research that informs and influences policy and practice. AREU also actively promotes a culture of research and learning by strengthening analytical capacity in Afghanistan and facilitating reflection and debate. Fundamental to AREU ’ s vision is that its work should improve Afghan lives .
www.areu.org.af / +93 (0) 799 608 548 / areu@areu.org.af
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About Me
- Susan
- MA, United States
- My husband, David, was killed on September 11th. At the time, we had two small children and I was pregnant with our third. Learning about the plight of widows in Afghanistan, I felt that I needed to reach out to them the way so many had reached out to me and my family. Decades of conflict and strife ravaged Afghanistan, leaving tens of thousands of women without husbands to provide for them, a cultural necessity in Afghanistan. In the fall of 2003, I co-founded Beyond the 11th. Our mission is to help provide financial and emotional support to Afghan widows and their children and to give them hope for a better future. Beyond the 11th’s grants are geared toward programs that help widows gain the skills necessary to generate their own income. We believe strongly that this is the best way to create lasting social change.
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