Zo werkt de wet in Kandahar

"Despite rampant police corruption and a prevailing sense that it will be years before law and order is effectively restored in Afghanistan, a simple comic book is being distributed among the children of Kandahar City in an effort to increase public awareness about the Afghan constitution, civil rights and legal reform.

The joint initiative by USAID and the Canadian-run Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar is part of a larger effort to bolster support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Its purpose is to remind citizens in the tumultuous southern region that his western-backed government has their best interest at heart and does not support lawlessness.

The concept is that people in Kandahar City and the outlying areas don't really understand a lot about the law of their country, said Lieutenant-Commander April Inglis, a Canadian legal adviser with the Kandahar PRT who is behind the program.

"The idea was to use this comic book program to reach out and touch people, not just children, but adults as well, in a non-threatening way," Inglis said.

"It starts to teach them about the fundamental document which governs their country."

Understanding the rule of law is a first step toward understanding the justice system and being able to use it when necessary, she said, noting the next step involves improving the country's court system.

The stories follow the lives of young Yassin, his sister Razia and his adoptive Uncle Raouf and explore the issues of child labour, property rights, police corruption, girls' education and security of the person among others.

About 16 teachers attended a workshop at the KPRT last week to learn about the books before fanning out to train more than 800 colleagues across the region. They will begin distributing some 47,000 comic books to students in Grades 1-5 today.

A six-book series, the comics will roll out one a week over the next couple of months.

While the comic books have previously been distributed in Kabul, Inglis said this is the largest mass distribution and a first for the volatile Kandahar province.

Mohammad Hashim, the headmaster of a boys school, said the books are "very vital for us."

Many of his school's 2,700 students aged seven to 20 face death threats from the Taliban just for attending school, Hashim said at the director of education's office where more than a dozen teachers from across the region came to collect boxes of the books for distribution.

"When they get threatened with the Taliban, we make them understand that we've got a proper government, you don't need to be scared anymore and to keep coming to school," he said through an interpreter.

Jamila Qureshi, a female teacher at a Kandahar school that instructs about 1,000 girls in the mornings and another 1,800 boys in the evenings, is hopeful the comic about education rights for girls will sink in.

"The thing that hurts me is that when a girl reaches Grade 6 or 7, she is taken out of school," she said through an interpreter. "The parents say that's more than enough."

Noting many girls are married off as young as 13, Qureshi said she has little control over keeping them in school but that she's had some success in convincing parents of unmarried girls to let their daughters learn beyond puberty.

Inglis said many of the teachers initially trained had no idea what a constitution was or how they were affected by it. She hopes the campaign will help inform as many as 300,000 people regardless of their literacy levels."

Bron: http://www.thespec.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/294127