ACBAR

Joint advocacy

ACBAR holds frequent advocacy meetings to identify and coordinate advocacy initiatives among members. The diversity of our members allows ACBAR to speak out and defend different sectorial and cross-cutting issues in Afghanistan. Based on members needs and the Afghan context, ACBAR coordinates position papers and campaigns to raise public awareness and influence decision makers. These collective approaches have led to the publication of various reports and position papers on topics such as aid effectiveness, protection, health and education.

Presently ACBAR has 178 members, a composition of international and national NGOs who have a long standing engagement with Afghanistan. ACBAR collaborates with different international and national platforms/networks for consultation and decision making processes for humanitarian relief and development issues. ACBAR is amongst others a member of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), Afghanistan’s Humanitarian Forum (AHF) and Sustainable Development Goal’s (SDGs) Executive Committee. Outside Afghanistan ACBAR is a member of ICVA and Interaction.

 

Advocacy

Advocating on international level

ACBAR engages in the international aid fora on Afghanistan and has been present at the London Conference, Brussels Conference and Geneva Conference. Currently ACBAR facilitates the Aid Effectiveness Working Group (AEWG), one of the commitments of the Brussels Conference on Afghanistan to follow up by the civil society.

In 2018 for the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan, ACBAR was actively involved in the coordination of the National Consultation Process of the Afghan Civil Society. Also the launching of the Triple Nexus dialogue was held in Geneva, read our position paper “Coordinating Triple Nexus in Afghanistan.” Our members had several publications on urgent issues, for further reading. The Civil Society Working Committee, which ACBAR is member of, also produced a report on the civil society input into the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan.

Advocating on national level

ACBAR’s goal is to enable its members and the wider NGO community to carry out their humanitarian relief and development activities more effectively. ACBAR advocates on policy issues with different institutions of the Government of Afghanistan as well as coordinating with other civil society and/or good governance actors.  

To connect better with local communities as NGO community, ACBAR created a couple of essential awareness tools to clarify the role and principles of NGOs:

A Community Awareness Flipchart -  explaining the role of NGOs and humanitarian principles in the flipchart;

Initiating Advocacy Efforts for NGOs in Afghanistan – a toolkit to help NGOs make use of  advocacy in their work;

Excerpts from the NGOs Law – a brief summary of the most important chapters in the NGO Law for discussions with local authorities.

Each year ACBAR organizes donor conferences which are an opportunity for donors to explain their funding strategy and for member NGOs to connect with donors.

ACBAR updates annually the mapping of all working groups in Afghanistan on humanitarian, development and peacebuilding areas.

Standing for Humanitarian Principles

ACBAR believes in the Humanitarian Principles, hence in the protection of humanitarian workers under  International Humanitarian Law (IHL) which offers  specific rules on access and delivery of humanitarian assistance in conflict areas as Afghanistan. In the event of  attacks against aid workers and NGO facilities, ACBAR speaks out on behalf of its members, to defend  humanitarian activities and services for  people in need.

For example:

NGO Community Afghanistan calls for action to ensure the protection of aid workers (Joint Press Statement January 2018)

Putting Protection at the Heart of the Peace Process (February 2018)