United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 (S/RES/1820), unanimously adopted on 19 June 2008, addresses sexual and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV) against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations. In the coming weeks, the UN secretariat – led by UN DPKO – will finalise a report outlining recommendations on 1820 implementation, which will then be discussed and adopted by the UN Security Council.

Every day, the lives of women and girls are being destroyed by sexual violence. Used as a tactic of war to terrorise communities, with devastating effect, rape is the hidden reality of conflict.

The UN Security Council has committed to tackle this violence before, during and after conflict, and to help the women and girls left to deal with the consequences.

We challenge them to make this commitment a reality.

Across all provinces in Afghanistan, there are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) delivering assistance in the midst of violence and political instability. Their ability to implement programmes safely and effectively is increasingly jeopardised by the deteriorating security situation.

In some districts, NGOs have significantly reduced their operations or even withdrawn entirely as their staff, projects and beneficiaries come under attack. In this challenging context, aid agencies have a responsibility to understand and manage their interactions with a range of armed forces active in Afghanistan.

Violent conflict and ‘situations of fragility’ represent significant challenges for aid effectiveness. Applying traditional development approaches in an unchanged fashion in such contexts simply does not work.

Aid can have unintended interactions with conflict –
both to exacerbate or mitigate violence or the potential for violence.1 For this reason, CARE International believes that working in or on conflict requires a different approach.

This paper seeks to outline a number of issues arising from the politicisation and militarisation of aid resulting from the use of comprehensive approaches, and to highlight the new challenges that this trend poses for civilian populations and non governmental
organizations (NGOs).

Through the examination of the Afghanistan case, it aims to explain some of the reasons for NGOs criticism of comprehensive approaches and their reluctance to collaborate with military actors.