First female judges association

This week marked the launch of Afghanistan's first association of female judges. Funded by the United Nation's Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Afghan Women Judges Association (AWJA) aims to ensure the active participation of female judges and lawyers in the judicial system, as well as to promote quality and reliable legal advice for vulnerable Afghan women countrywide. Speaking in the Afghan capital, Kabul, the AWJA deputy director, Huma Alizoi, a graduate of Kabul University's faculty of law, with 17 years experience under her belt, told IRIN that despite the AWJA having experienced women judges and lawyers, these had never been given the opportunity to assume higher positions. "We have women judges with 25 years experience, but unfortunately they have not yet reached supreme court membership," she explained, adding that there had been some narrow-minded people in the judiciary, particularly in the supreme court, who had blocked their accession. "We should work to create a mechanism whereby women are in a position to understand and claim their rights through tribunals and legal representation," she said, deploring the fact that over the past two decades women judges had always been pushed into a corner and there were still no women in Afghanistan's supreme court. UNIFEM"s programme specialist, Shawna Wakefield, told IRIN in Kabul that the association was formed in response to last March's Afghan Women's Consultation demand in which women from all over the country voiced their desire to contribute to all aspects of the political, administrative and legal constitutional mechanisms of government. "This supports the government's national development plan, which seeks to ensure that gender is mainstreamed in all national priorities," Wakefield explained. There are currently some 50 female judges in Afghanistan, most of whom work in Kabul. "Because of security and some unsuitable traditional matters, women judges cannot work in the provinces," Alizoi said, noting that there was only one female judge in the northern province of Balkh. She maintained that women would have to work harder to prove the efficient and effective role they could play in judicial affairs if public perception were to change, particularly in rural areas. Pointing to the main challenges female judges face, she said some laws and decrees - as well as traditional practices, which frankly discriminated against women - had restricted their ability to move upwards. "People do not hire female lawyers or judges when they need legal defence for their cases," Alizoi said. But according to the deputy director, women could play a significant role in the judiciary if the matter were taken into consideration under the new constitution. "The new constitution should emphasise that the habitual and traditional practices which undermine women's value should be prevented," she said. AWJA's first initiative - the Training Programme on Legal Capacity Building of Judges and Lawyers - will train 100 female judges and lawyers in different laws of the country, in order to prepare women to play a more active role in the country's judiciary. "We have four volunteer legal consultants who will provide free counselling for vulnerable women," Alizoi said, adding that they were planning to work on 175 cases this year alone.