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On the occasion of the second anniversary of CSHRN’s activities in the northern and north eastern parts of Afghanistan, a dialogue was organized by the CSHRN office in Mazar-e-Sharif city. Representatives of the Independent Human Rights Commission, local NGOs, intellectuals, media, and students from Balkh University participated in this dialogue. The goal of the dialogue was to discuss the role of CSHRN in the promotion of human rights and in strengthening human rights organizations in the northern provinces of Afghanistan with a special focus on the province of Mazar-e-Sharif.

At the beginning of the meeting, Soruosh Kazemi, the coordinator of CSHRN in the north, welcomed the participants and appreciated their cooperation with CSHRN in the northern part of Afghanistan. During his speech, he emphasized the role of CSHRN in the field of capacity building, dialogue and coordination as well as collaboration amongst human rights activists in the region. He told the participants that during these two years CSHRN had worked with nine provinces in the northern and northeastern parts of Afghanistan. He also expressed his gratitude to the Afghan Human Rights Commission, the human and women rights NGOs, teachers and professors of Balkh University, and the local state authorities for their cooperation during the past two years.

Mr. Sohrab Zamanian, the chief editor of PADIDAR magazine, spoke about the role of CSHRN in Mazar city. Appreciatively, he supported the role of CSHRN in providing opportunities for human rights activists especially in the field of freedom of speech in Mazar-e-Sharif. He mentioned that since the establishments of CSHRN in Mazar, a series of useful dialogues were organized in the CSHRN conference hall, what represented a magnificent achievement for all human rights defenders. On the occasion of that day he also remembered the interesting discussions about freedom of speech and freedom of thoughts with young students from the faculty of journalism of Balkh University. He thanked CSHRN for all its efforts. Mr. Rajab Ebrahimi, one of the intellectuals active in Balk province, talked about the role of CSHRN in capacity building of NGOs in Mazar-e- Sharif. He mentioned specifically the debate manual on the rights of women. He said that this manual was used by him to teach the rights of women in a very flexible way. According to him, the manual gave a lot of information and methodologies as well as tactics on how to deal with women rights in Afghanistan. To him, he said, that manual was very easy to use. He also said that the publications of CSHRN were very useful sources for the promotion of human rights in the north of Afghanistan. He thought that those publications would be judged in the future as main elements creating changes in Afghanistan.

Then Mr. Azim Azimi, a member of the Steering Committee of the Association for a better Afghanistan, thanked CSHRN for all activities conducted during the past two years. He said that CSHRN was a committed organization with a sustainable program and useful activities. He explained that although the activities of CSHRN were not enough for such a big region as the northern and north eastern parts of the country, these activities were an illustration of the future work of this organization. He hoped that the number of activities would increase in the future.

The gathering concluded with remarks of representatives from AIHRC from the northern part of Afghanistan who coordinate and collaborate in many fields with CSHRN. It was remarked that the collaboration showed the solid and valuable cooperation of human rights actors in the north of Afghanistan. At the end of the meeting, the participants underlined the importance of a continuation of the dialogue among human rights actors in the region.