Description
This paper will use an overarching narrative built within the Women, peace and security agenda and how this operates and appears for women and girls in Afghanistan. It will journey through the UNSCR1325 and the various National Action Plans that were set up by various nations that crumbled very quickly. With the quick return to exclusion from the peace talks, exclusions experienced through evacuation and resettlement policy and a complete disregard for built in cross cutting inequalities that - the experience of intersecting exclusions and what these mean to the everyday experience of being an Afghan woman shall be discussed within this paper.
The complete collapse of the humanitarian aid programmes and related policy, with gender ‘mainstreamed’ for the last two decades within them, and what this indicates for the future of any such policy needs critical reexamination. This paper shall raise questions about the current status of gender related policy within conflict and fragile settings and the commitment to these going forward. What is clear from Afghanistan’s recent experience allows us to question the depth and applicability of these approaches and how quickly they become hollow and meaningless in the face of crisis.
Keywords: Gender, Women, Peace and Security, Exclusion, Inequality, Policy.
