New Report Examines America’s Efforts to Protect Women’s Rights While Securing Peace and Security in Afghanistan

AMHERST, Mass. – Nearly a year after American forces withdrew from Afghanistan, there is significant global concern about the status and rights of women and girls in the country following the Taliban’s takeover.

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A new policy brief published this week by the UMass Amherst Human Security Lab outlines a number of recommendations that U.S. officials can follow to help ensure that women’s rights are not traded away for peace by ensuring their basic needs are met and by expanding opportunities for them to flee the country.

The report, “Rethinking America’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Afghanistan,” comes as the Taliban expand their edicts limiting women’s human rights, including preventing girls from returning to school and, most recently, a new edict on enforced veiling.

“As a former conflict party, the U.S. will have limited influence over the Taliban now that it has withdrawn from the country, but can at least make policy choices that mitigate the damage to women from this new situation, including supporting peace efforts toward an inclusive government,” says Charli Carpenter, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the Human Security Lab.

The report, produced by a team of seven research assistants under the direction of Carpenter, recommends that the U.S. should continue to isolate the Taliban diplomatically, but scale back its use of economic sanctions on behalf of women. Instead, it should focus on gender-inclusive programming aimed at wider initiatives that will empower women to advocate for themselves, including health-care, education, support for infrastructure and technology, and access to asylum for those eligible. The U.S. can also continue to play a powerful role for women through third parties, incentivizing moderate Muslim-majority states, transnational Muslim scholars and Islamic aid organizations to advocate for women, and directly support female-led or women’s-rights-focused local civil society initiatives in Afghanistan.

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The researchers also suggest that the U.S. can improve support for Afghan women by channeling small grants directly to local civil society organizations, rather than primarily through its traditional partners or through bilateral aid to the current Afghan government.

Building on the latest academic research about gender and conflict, as well as consultations with academic experts, practitioner organizations, and Afghan civil society stakeholders, the Human Security Lab research team simultaneously wrote an internal paper for the U.S. Agency for International Development with recommendations for USAID’s gender programming in the country, based on the same consultations, and presented their findings at USAID earlier this month.

“This new report extends the Human Security Lab’s stakeholder engagement model by which the Lab works with government, NGO and international organization stakeholders to crowdsource and communicate the latest social scientific consensus on pressing policy dilemmas,” Carpenter says. “The Lab’s first project last fall made the case for a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. This summer, the Lab will turn its attention to new projects addressing other important human security problems: civilian protection in Ukraine, and nuclear disarmament advocacy.”

The full report, “Rethinking America’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Afghanistan,” is available online at humansecuritylab.net.