CMI partner PTRO signs Memorandum of Understanding with Attorney Generals Office in Afghanistan
On 18th of April, CMI partner Peace Training and Research Organisation (PTRO) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Afghanistan’s Attorney General’s Office (AGO) in Kabul in connection with the PTRO-CMI project New Afghan Men? Masculinties, Marriage and Sexual Politics in Contemporary Afghanistan . As part of the project, researchers are examining the prosecution of men for consensual sexual crimes in Afghanistan. While there has been some focus on how women are prosecuted and convicted for moral crimes in Afghanistan, this is the first time researchers have looked at how the Afghan justice system prosecute men for moral crimes such as adultery.
The MoU will facilitate data collection in the Attorney General’s Office for this purpose. In addition to facilitating access to official records in the AGO, the MoU will also make it possible for the research team to access to the results of an internal investigation by the AGO looking into the legal grounds for the imprisonment of dozens of men currently serving prison time in Kabul’s Central Prison. This review was made possible as a result of a year-long effort by the research team compiling and analysing official statistics from a number of sources including the Supreme Court, Kabul’s Family Courts, Central Prisons Directorate and AGO. It is hoped that the review will be the first in a series of such investigations to be undertaken by AGO in all the provincial prisons in Afghanistan with the aim of examining the actual basis for the imprisonment of men for moral crimes in Afghanistan.
