Afghan Civic Engagement Program (ACEP)

This project is awarded by USAID/Counterpart International in Afghanistan. NSDO is implemented for the period of 2016 – 2019 with the aim of raising awareness among the residents of Kunduz Province about topics such as Islam and Democracy; the three pillars of Government – executive, legislative and judiciary; elections in Afghanistan; human rights and women; civil society; sexual harassment; and counter human trafficking, election cycle in Afghanistan, Voting as civic responsibility, Information about different types of voting and election, Importance of vote and participation in the election process, Election Law of Afghanistan and Importance of participation of women in the election process and peace through conducting civic education sessions, community sessions and addressed the challenges in advocacy efforts and sessions.

The project helped to change the mindset of community people surrounding the aforementioned topics who earlier to the civic educational sessions, believed that Islam and Democracy and human rights are not compatible with each other but however, subsequent to the completion of civic educational sessions, favored democracy and now believe that Islam and Democracy are interlinked with each other since it helps the transition of power to take place smoothly without resorting to violent measures. This motivated and mobilized each of them to act much more responsibly and to advocate for their own legitimate rights for addressing the problems which had remained pending for years as a result of their non-engagement. As a consequence, they came to believe that their engagement could make the difference and they vowed to voluntarily act for the welfare of their community by raising their voices of concern for improving their livelihood and bringing positive changes to their lives by hold government accountable for its responsibilities and obligations to be carried out for the welfare of people.

Protecting Women’s Rights by Elimination of Violence Against Women-Law Implementation

NSDO implemented the entitling project for a period performance May, 2017 up to December 31, 2017 in Kunduz province. The project contributed for each following objectives; 1) Decreasing violence against women in Kunduz province by establishing 4 advocacy groups at the provincial level in each of the targeted districts operating for women’s rights and their advocacy efforts for EVAW Law, 2) Enhancing the capacity of advocacy groups during the course of project implementation to influence government authorities, 3) Enhancing the public outreach among 100 women in terms of Women’s Political Participation and EVAW Law implementation in all the targeted districts and 4) Addressing problems faced by women through advocacy meetings with Governor of Kunduz province and district governors of each district. As a consequence, NSDO was witnessed the following results through the implementation of the project; 1) enhanced the capacity of project team perspectives of legal knowledge and skills, 2) increased the knwolege of 80 advocacy coalition members on networking, advocacy and EVAW as well as established a close linkage in between the governmental entities and advocacy members and 3) EVAW-Law cases at the district levels referred and addressed by advocacy coalition members in Kunduz.

Active Citizens for Responsive and Accountable Sub-National Governance

This project is funded by UN-Habitat for a period of 10 months (July 2019 – April 2020) and aims to increase role of youths, women, CSOs and Community Influential to support influence on government officials, preventing corruption in public welfare projects during project life in 8 provincial districts of Kunduz Province with the objectives of 1) to train 160 People including representatives from youths, women, civil society activists, IDPs and community influential People’s to build their capacity on Citizens’ Score Card (CSR), Provincial Budget Monitoring (PBM), and Urban Development + Management during project timeframe and 2) establish two Advocacy Committees including CSR and PBM to monitor public welfare projects and share the results to relevant government authorities, especially municipality of Kunduz to take required actions, by the end of project. The Project impacted on the following levels 1) Technical level: Trained participants and CSOs became more aware of budgeting processes and realized the benefits of being knowledgeable and active on municipality and environmental projection departments, 2) Economic level: With increased responsiveness, transparency and accountability on service delivery in sectors of municipality and environmental and more locally informed budget processes, Local Authorities expected to have access to the key economic resources required to deliver these services and 3) Social level: Constructive engagement led over time to a change in attitudes of LAs, seeing citizens and youths more and more as credible partners. Shifting attitudes and creating spaces for dialogue within the project created the right setting for continued careful joint advocacy and support citizen monitoring of expenditures going forward. Within this process, a careful analysis of the differentiated budget needed of men, women and young people enabled gender and youth needs to be considered. As a consequence, citizens were also more likely to make contributions to the system which they understand, have helped to shape, and in the longer term may begin to place trust in.

Civic Advocacy for Public Sector (CAPS- Accountability)

This project is funded by USAID/AMANAT in Afghanistan and NSDO is implemented for a period of one year (12 months) in the three north-eastern provinces of Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan which is aimed at promoting accountability among the relevant government authorities and promoting civic monitoring by means of community mobilization as well as engaging the communities through social auditing and advocacy efforts by the monitoring and advocacy committees in all the three provinces. The objectives; 1) To increase knowledge and enhance capacity of 450 community members as whistle-blowers in the three targeted provinces and training on Access to Information, Good Governance, Budget Monitoring, Citizen Score Card and Social Auditing. The participants will commit to applying these tools to be whistleblowers and hold public institutions accountable, 2) To promote accountability and effective service delivery by the Departments of Rural Rehabilitation and Developments (DRRDs) and Municipalities of Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan provinces by establishing, training and official registration of the three Monitoring Advocacy Committees (MACs) on direct utilization of Citizen Report Card and Provincial Budget Monitoring (PBM) and follow up advocacy during the project and 3) To raise and enhance public awareness on social auditing and whistleblowing and their roles and significance in holding relevant authorities accountable for better, effective and qualitative service delivery by the whistleblowers, MAC members through media outreach activities including TV roundtables, social media posts, networking and religious leaders.

Traditional Disputes Resolutions (TDR)

The entitled project is awarded by USAID/ADALAT in Afghanistan. NSDO is implemented for the course of  9 months in Badakhshan province to strengthen the existing Traditional Dispute Resolution TDR system through mitigating the negative practices and enhancing the positive in addition to building linkages between formal and informal justice systems as well as to improve access to fair, transparent and legal local justice services through selection and training of TDR actors to build their capacity and knowledge on prevalent laws protecting the basic human and citizen rights within the first six months of project cycle, to foster collaboration between formal and informal justice actors as value-added through coordination, district and network meetings between state and TDR actors throughout the life cycle of project, to reduce the frequency and seriousness of disputes by means of replacing the negative TDR practices by positive ones in a series of coordination and state-TDR actors and dispensary meetings in the last six months of the project’s life cycle and to address grievances of women in TDR practices by engaging them in spinsary group activities that help to resolve minor issues in families, children and neighbors by preventing these minor issues to evolve into much larger and more violent incidents in the last six months of the project’s life cycle.