Afghanistan—Promote: Musharikat

Musharikat supports the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Afghanistan’s investments in women’s rights groups and activists. Musharikat—which means “partnership” or “participation” in Dari and Pashto—works to build constituencies, strengthen advocacy, and increase awareness and support for women’s equality and empowerment in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Select Activities

• Complete an initial inclusive and nationally representative consultative process, and operationalize priorities identified.
• Assist coalitions to use traditional and social media, online functions, and international exchanges.
• Train organizations and coalitions to improve advocacy, behavior change campaigns, and sustainability.
• Develop a policy agenda and strategy.
• Support gender-sensitive planning, budgeting, and monitoring.

Select Results

• Established eight issue-based coalitions: Violence Against Women, Access to Education, Access to Economic Opportunities, Women’s Political Participation, Access to Justice, Access to Healthcare, Women in the Peace Process, and Anti-Harassment of Women and Girls.
• Recruited 330 civil society organization (CSO) members and 2,200 individual members to join the coalitions.
• Launched advocacy campaigns for the eight Musharikat coalitions at the national and regional levels.
• Conducted two national summits at which key Afghan government officials and civil society stakeholders confirmed commitment to work with Musharikat coalitions on policies identified in the advocacy campaign plans.
• Established a virtual information exchange and communications platform—the Musharikat Knowledge Management Platform—for coalition members.
• Awarded and successfully completed 33 advocacy grants to Afghan CSOs—many of which operate in remote and marginalized communities—to raise awareness about women’s rights and advocate for change at the sub-national level.
• Delivered advocacy and women’s rights training for more than 5,900 people.
• Conducted sessions on raising awareness on coalition issues with more than 18,000 individuals, including youth, community leaders, religious leaders, students and teachers, government officials, and civil society activists.