Afghanistan's Youth Commitment for ICPD25 PoA
Commitment description:Decades of conflict in Afghanistan devastated all and sundry infrastructures in the country. When the international community commenced its support with the Afghan people and government in 2001, still much tangible achievements and progress is in place. But, there are still issues of SRHR, health, education etc. that need to be solved. The National Youth Strategy of Afghanistan indicates that health, education, employment, participation and sports are the urgent needs of youth and adolescents. Not only the government and international partners but people also have the responsibility to work, advocate and make efforts to bring positive change and tackle ICPD issues in Afghanistan.
2019 marks 25 years from the time when the govnts first made their historic commitments in Cairo, Egypt in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and adopted the developed programme of action (PoA). In Nov. 2019, in Nairobi Summit on ICPD25; a conference to mobilize the political will and financial commitments we urgently need to finally implement the ICPD Programme of Action.
• We commit to advocate in Afghanistan for multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional solutions to bring positive social change in promoting SRHR, gender equality, youth participation & employment, countering gender based violence, health, education and sports.
• We will create more awareness on the life threating dangers early pregnancy as result of early and child marriage. We will do this through community dialogues, advocacy for accessibility of SRHR information, organize youth camps that will provide a platform for the youth with entrepreneurship skills, and above all, we will empower victims of teenage pregnancy with marketable skills trainings, which will reduce on their vulnerability. Besides, we will also advocate for better maternal health by reducing barriers to easy access health.
Modes of engagement:
- Budgetary and financialWe commit to conduct three advocacy meetings with the MoF and MPs in coordination with UNFPA Afghanistan to ask them to allocate enough amount of budget for Health, SRHR, Youth Employment and participation, Education and sports in 2022.
- Change or creation of legislationIn next 3 years, we commit to conducting five sessions of trainings to provide almost 500 young university students with information about country’s laws on gender based violence, in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
- Policy and guidanceWe commit to advocating for the inclusion of non-gendered language in Afghanistan’s guidelines for its SRHR policy by 2025.
- Programmatic actionWe commit to counter GBV by supporting 16 young girls and boys in six major provinces of Afghanistan to develop and implement youth led and youth driven advocacy project for raising awareness about SRHR in their communities by 2030.
Uphold the right to sexual and reproductive health care in humanitarian and fragile contexts(12) Ensuring that the basic humanitarian needs and rights of affected populations, especially that of girls and women, are addressed as critical components of responses to humanitarian and environmental crises, as well as fragile and post-crisis reconstruction contexts, through the provision of access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information, education and services, including access to safe abortion services to the full extent of the law, and post-abortion care, to significantly reduce maternal mortality and morbidity, sexual and gender-based violence and unplanned pregnancies under these conditions.
