Throughout Afghanistan, due to lack of education, social and moral values there is a high prevalence of human rights violations. Mostly children and women are affected by these human rights violations. In many areas the women are treated inhumanely and remain exposed to violence and torture by their husbands, brothers and other relatives. Similarly, many conflicts take place between communities on the small issues that leads to blood shedding and human loss. HRADO is a major actor that has contributed in the elimination of human rights violations and gender mainstreaming in Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan Provinces of Afghanistan.
HRADO is an indigenous organization and works for the protection of basic human rights. It has a separate department for raising awareness about rights and it is led by experienced and professional experts. All the HRADO staff is trained in the implementation of projects for awareness raising and advocacy of rights at all platforms and sectors of life. HRADO has good access to both male and female rights based activists, legal experts and advocacy trainers. It continuously works with the local associations, Shura’s, DDC’s and CDC’s and HRADO has the complete support of government officials, local and community leaders, elite, Ulema, media, academia, and youth.
HRADO as part of its activities has established a network of rights based activists; social volunteers; CSOs; and religious leaders in Takhar Province. HRADO has a well-developed capacity and capability of implementing women, child rights projects in Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan Provinces.
Building SHGs is part of HRADO’s livelihood-related activities and work. HRADO forms male and female community SHGs of the poor and works with them to organize and mobilize all the resources available with them. HRADO empowers poor people to overcome poverty by helping them to make savings, make investments, produce local products, and generate more income for spending for their own living, spending it on their children’s education and health care, getting access to a reliable food supply and finally reducing their vulnerability. HRADO also provides support for improving people’s means of income by providing access to savings and credit programmes, small business loans, and helping people gain skills to run small and medium enterprises/businesses.
HRADO has successfully implemented a SHGs project in Takhar in 2010-2011, under which 45 villages had been covered and a total of 1,400 poor and marginalized women were mobilized who got organized into SHGs. These women and through them, their family members gained the skills how to make savings and invest them in SMEs and small businesses such as tailoring, home-based bakeries, home-based vegetable gardens, village level shopkeepers, livestock rearing and business and etc. This project was supported financially and technically by AKF in Takhar province.
Despite some improvement in the living conditions of the people of Afghanistan during the last decade, about 40 percent of the population still lives below the poverty-line making the country continues to remain amongst the poorest countries in the World.
HRADO has been supporting the livelihoods of the poor communities in rural areas in north east region for the last five years during which it has worked at both the household and as well as at community level while striving to increase the ability of the poor household members to earn a living. HRADO’s effort has not only been limited to increasing poor families’ income, but has also gone beyond that and covered other aspects of living which have an impact on a person’s life. Therefore, HRADO believes that its other programs – education, health, governance and disaster relief are inter-linked as they play a vital role in shaping and providing of a better living to the poor communities by improving their access to food, health, education, awareness of their rights and emergency assistance.
Over 80 percent of all Afghans depend on agriculture and related businesses to feed their families. In almost all of the rural areas where the poor reside, interventions from the Afghan government are inadequate to respond to the needs of the poor as fluctuation of food prices, drought and chronic poverty rate is very high. Within the development perspective, HRADO’s work focuses on communities’ better access to food. Through different development project packages, tools, seeds, knowledge, and training to enable people to become more self-sufficient through more productive agriculture, horticulture, Poultry, vegetable gardens, and livestock rearing is provided by HRADO.
HRADO has implemented projects to reduce the rate mortality and morbidity of mothers and children in poor communities by provision of awareness on personal and environmental hygiene. Most of the diseases in poor communities are often because of lack of awareness about personal and environmental hygiene and basic health education. Awareness raising on these subjects ensured the decrease in mortality rate among the mothers and children, and on the other hand the money saved which they were spending on health care and medicines allowed them to spend it on other aspects of their lives which in turn it contributed in improvement of livelihoods of the poor.
All community-based projects have to be sustainable for which an essential factor is the value that the community places in them and their ownership by the CDCs. HRADO ensures that this takes place in all its projects by seeing that it is explained and covered. The community’s role in maintaining hygiene, safe keeping water sources, in addition, the approach of continuing health education at schools, mosques, health centers and CDCs levels has helped in ensuring the sustainability of all the projects. Besides, creating technical capacity in the targeted poor communities HRADO also develops skills within the community on how to keep water sources safe and healthy, repairing and controlling of water sources so that they do not get damaged which assures the durability of the projects. HRADO ensured the implementation of a high standard of these aspects which helped in the successful implementation of its Hygiene and Health Education projects.
Afghanistan is a country that is prone to natural disasters; the north and northeast region is particularly highly vulnerable to emergencies as a result of conflicts and natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and droughts.
Since HRADO works in the northeast region, it is well established and familiar with the region for the last five years, so whenever a disaster strikes HRADO is immediately present in the area and is able to immediately and rapidly respond to emergencies while making sure to help and assistance gets to where it is needed the most.
HRADO recognizes that partnership with other INGO, LNGOs and actors during emergencies and humanitarian crises can speed up the response process quickly and effectively whenever they occur because it is not possible to respond to the large scale of disasters and emergencies on its own due to the scale of the disaster and for which it always seeks to work in partnership with other actors. Through partnerships, HRADO easily implements disaster risk reduction programs, especially because of its capability and capacity to identify and assess the risk and prepare plans to manage the disaster and create an early warning system and in turn reduce the vulnerability of communities against natural disaster risk and future hazards.
Education is the basic right of all human beings living on this planet. In Afghanistan, about 70% of the population is not educated. There are limited resources, infrastructure and human resources available in this sector. Due to the high poverty rate, parents are unable to support their children’s schooling expenses. The high child labor rate is another main problem in the promotion of education in Afghanistan.
In remote areas, there is no concept of women’s education and this is the reason that there are no educational institutions for females. Women can play a pivotal role in the promotion and bringing of peace in Afghanistan. HRADO works actively for the promotion of women’s education in Afghanistan for which it has conducted many workshops in Takhar province for training female teachers in promoting women’s education. HRADO has also been involved in the distribution of free books, small donations and gifts to the families sending their kids to school with limited resources.
After more than thirty years of conflict, war and its destruction have created a deep psychological effect on the minds of the Afghan populace. Many warlords emerged in this long period of internal war and blood-shedding, and even now, after ten years of rule by the democratic government, many people in remote areas still feel fear and uncertainty and have no trust in the democratic government. Although many government institutions are trying their best to mitigate this fear and uncertainty still it will take time to result in a behavioral change in the community members living in remote areas which have a low rate of education.
Peacebuilding is one of the core responsibilities of the civil societies in Afghanistan, HRADO being a prominent civil society organization in Afghanistan has established a separate section for this purpose. This section is led by influential community leaders and professional experts that work in remote areas of Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan Provinces of Afghanistan to implement many projects sponsored by different donors and supported by HRADO itself.