Introduction

I'm Jasteena Dhillon, and I am a lawyer working in Afghanistan. I've been here for over six months, which is a long time for people working in humanitarian work. I plan to be here for a few years. I am managing legal aid programs for returnees and people who have experienced human rights violations.

I have worked in many different post-conflict environments. Before Afghanistan, I was in Bosnia in the Balkans, in Serbia and Croatia. I have worked in Palestine, in Gaza and the West Bank. I have also worked in South Africa, after the adoption of the constitution. I have also worked in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia and in Thailand. In all of those places it's been projects related to women, gender, human rights, legal rights, managing projects. I have always been in post-conflict, development environments.

For me, Afghanistan is a place where I have been closer to the conflict than in other places. When I went to the other places they were already into the development phases. In Afghanistan, the international community wants to develop the rule of law and human rights from the very beginning. It's not like you reconstruct people's houses and then you teach them how to observe human rights or observe the rule of law. I think this is good. It's difficult, because of the different living conditions. I don't work out of Kabul-I cover every province north of Salang to the Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan borders. As a general comment, people would say that it is a safer environment to work in now. There isn't open conflict going on now and you don't have to live in compounds under strict security restrictions. This means that we can actually make a concrete difference in people's lives.


Project Description

We have eight legal aid clinics all over the country. We have two in Kabul, one in Jalalabad, one in Bamiyan, one in Herat and three in the north: Pol-e Khomri, Mazar and Meymaneh. We have four lawyers and two advocates, who are lawyers but are doing work with other aspects that our vulnerable clients have to deal with. For instance, like a legal clinic in Canada, you will have people who have a claim against welfare, and who have problems because they don't have a job or they have health problems, so you refer them to other agencies. So it's really clinical law.

We also have an education component. Now that families have come back and their return is sustainable and they have their land back, what about education for their children? These legal aid clinics are composed of local Afghan lawyers. There are not too many of us "internationals" and we're all legal advisers.


Alternative Dispute Resolution

The success rate in the formal legal system is not as high as the success rate in the informal legal system. That's mainly because the formal legal structures, such as the buildings, are dilapidated. Documents are lost, people are corrupt, they don't get paid enough, and people don't have faith in them. The informal legal systems work better because you're able to come up with more creative solutions to problems. I think we learned that as well in Canada. Just in the last 10 years, more and more judges are sending things out for mediation or for some alternative dispute resolution. If it can't be resolved that way, then those cases come back to court. Don't waste your time and money.

I walked into the place where a jirga (a traditional mechanism of conflict resolution in Afghanistan) was going to be held. I actually didn't sit in the circle; I sat out, but the elders invited me to sit in. There is that special status of a foreigner-it doesn't matter what gender you are. You're a generic foreigner, so you're allowed in the circle. If I were an Afghan woman working with an international NGO, I don't know if they would give me the same treatment.

I'm not conducting the jirga. The local lawyers are conducting the jirga because part of our work is capacity building-to actually facilitate them to conduct it. If I keep doing it for them they won't be able to do it when we're gone. So I'm present but I hardly say anything, except for one or two occasions.

For example, we had this possible solution mentioned by one of the jirga members. The jirga member was one of the elders, not one of our lawyers, and he suggested something along the lines of: "Let's solve this case and my daughter will go live with you"-a person-swapping solution. I responded by saying that in some cases we have to think about international standards-"people are not property and that's not a way to compensate someone, to give them your daughter." So I will intervene on those kinds of things. My lawyers are learning about international human rights law so that those kinds of solutions will not be accepted. In tribal settings this has been known to happen-to give up a sister or wife-because they don't have any money.

I feel I've been fortunate to be able to observe jirgas.