UN Women UK: Working for women's empowerment and gender equality

Progress for Women Is Progress for All

Eleven centres are now operational although the security environment has had a severe impact on the ability to keep at least two of them open continuously. The services they offer have reached over twelve thousand beneficiaries (women and girls) since the first centre opened in 2003.

Meeting a need

UN Women supported the establishment of the centres in response to the urgent need for meeting places for women to discuss their priorities, gain access to social services, and improve their education and skills. The principles of community ownership provide the basis for operating the provincial centres, and they bring together a number of local organisations offering a range of services including health education, literacy classes, income-generation and vocational skills training, legal and psychological support, child care and computer training. The centres also function as a much-needed support network for women’s empowerment at the provincial level, since facilities of this kind did not exist previously.

Making progress

Achievements in 2005 included:

• Nearly doubling the number of users of the centre services since the previous reporting period.
• Improving economic prospects for women through business skills development, training in production for the market, microcredit initiatives and market linkages facilitated by the Afghan Women’s Business Council. Almost half of women using centre services participated in income-generating programmes such as fruit drying, food preservation, handicraft production, shoemaking and computer courses. Microcredit groups have been provided with seed funds through UN Women, local NGOs and organisations such as Grameen Bank. Of special note are the Women’s Fair Days, open-air markets which generated great enthusiasm and potential, and the Kabul tailoring initiative, in which ten women and a project leader, mentored by a professional Italian fashion designer, worked to produce a clothing line.
• Raising understanding among women of human rights and the key national processes of nation-building, reform and reconstruction.
• Increasing access to legal aid and counselling through the services of professional associations of women’s lawyers as well as access to psychosocial counselling.
• Strengthening the independent management structure of centres.

Looking forward

In 2006 UN Women will work to enhance the management skills of the centres’ leadership and stakeholders, build capacity for more training and service provision, facilitate a support network among the provincial and community centres, and promote their overall visibility. While the centres have made much progress, there remains a great need for ongoing support to ensure that these young institutions can take root and grow.

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