 Conflict between individuals, communities, and nations is inevitable. But at USIP, the United States Institute of Peace, we know conflicts can be resolved without resorting to violence. In fact, when conflicts are well managed, they can lead to transformative change for the better. But what does this actually mean, and what sets us apart as we pursue peace? We are a national, nonpartisan, independent institute that embodies America's commitment to peace. We've worked to become, and remain, a trusted expert in reducing conflict around the world. To disrupt cycles of violence and build sustainable peace, USIP works both from the bottom up with community, grassroots, and faith-based groups, and from the top down with leaders and governments. We're proactive, employing research and training that leads to action and makes communities and nations resilient to the forces that deal in violence and extremism. Our team works around the world, including in some of the most dangerous conflict zones. But we don't work alone. We partner with peace builders operating on the front line to build just and secure nations that can manage their own conflicts peacefully. We train communities to connect opposing sides using mediation, negotiation, and dialogue to bring nonviolent resolutions to conflict and build peace that lasts. Because we know that peace is practical, possible, and a process that is essential to saving lives and money. We all know that peace is hard. But at USIP, we believe it's worth it for our country and for the world. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, everyone. One of the benefits of having a Zoom function and a Zoom audience is that we can address everybody around the world at different times. I hope that you all are staying healthy during these difficult coronavirus situation that we find ourselves in. My name is Scott Worden, and I'm the director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia programs for the US Institute of Peace. We are thrilled today to be partnering with our colleagues at the World Justice Project to launch their latest report, The Rule of Law in Afghanistan, Key Findings from 2019. This is officially launching today. We have a distinguished panel of discussants as well as a distinguished audience. I would like to welcome Ambassador Roya Rahmani, the Afghan ambassador to Washington, who I know is watching, but also other Afghan officials and citizens who are dealing with twin challenges of an ongoing conflict and COVID. So this is a difficult time for Afghanistan, and we appreciate the difficulty of the situation. For everybody watching on different platforms, we invite you to take part in the discussion today. We will be checking the comment feed on the YouTube channel as well as on Twitter, and today's hashtag is hashtag R-O-L-A Afghanistan. So R-O-L Afghanistan, all one word. After my introductions, the World Justice Project team will present their report, and then we have two panelists to issue commentary from an Afghan perspective, and then I will lead a discussion which will include taking questions from the audience. And so if you can identify your name and where you're asking your question from, then we can have this be a more intimate and inclusive conversation. When we first say that the U.S. Institute of Peace has long been a proponent of the importance that rule of law plays in conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and it's a fundamental building broth block of peace and stability. USIP has had an office in Afghanistan since 2008, and one of our key programmatic areas is promoting the rule of law, working with Afghan civil society organizations, as well as Afghan judicial institutions to try to increase access to justice and legal understanding. I want to first introduce Dr. Alejandro Ponce who will be providing introductory remarks. He is the Chief Research Officer of the World Justice Project. He joined as a senior economist and is one of the original designers and lead author of the World Justice Project Rule of Law Injects. After Dr. Ponce, Amy Griskovich will present the report's key findings and recommendations. She is the Director of Criminal Justice Research at WJP, and she leads their thematic research on global criminal justice indicators and country-specific research on Afghanistan. Our first commentator will then be Giselle Harris. She is currently serving as the Ombudsperson for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a new and vital role. Since 2012, she has been Assistant Professor of Law at the American University of Afghanistan. And from 2016 to 2019, she served as a commissioner for the Independent Commission on the Oversight and Implementation of the Constitution, as well as being a civil society leader in past roles. Finally, we will be hearing from Abdullah Ahmadzai. He is the Asia Foundation's country representative, and he has overseen the Asia Foundation's long-standing survey, which includes rule of law issues. The USIP has been proud to partner with the Asia Foundation on launching that report, and so the comparisons should be quite interesting. He has also been a senior election official having served as the Chief Election Officer for the 2010 Afghan elections. So, without further ado, thanks for joining for this conversation, and let me turn it over to Dr. Kossi. Thank you, Scott. Good morning to everyone in the US, and good evening to everyone joining in Afghanistan. On behalf of our board, our officers, our staff, I would like to thank you for turning today to learn about the latest findings of the Rule of Law in Afghanistan report, our latest effort to measure the rule of law in Afghanistan. We owe a special thanks to the United States Incident for Peace, for virtually hosting this event. We are great admirers of their work to promote peace around the world, and it's a pleasure to be working with you to disseminate the most recent findings of the Rule of Law in Afghanistan. For those of you who are new to the work of this project, we are an independent multi-disciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law around the world. We do these in several ways. First, by collecting and analyzing original independent rule of law data that we present in a series of reports, including the rule of law index. We also support research, scholarship, and teaching about the importance of the rule of law, its relationship with economic development, as well as effective strategies to strengthen it. And third, by building a multi-disciplinary global network of policymakers, experts, advocates through strategic convenings and local initiatives. As part of our commitment to advance the rule of law around the world, the WHOP has collected data on rule of law topics in Afghanistan since 2013. Today we're releasing our latest report, The Rule of Law in Afghanistan, Key Findings 2019, which examines the rule of law situation in the country from the perspectives and experiences of Afghans. The latest edition of this report also features new data collected from inmates in Afghanistan, which provide an unprecedented glimpse into the real experience of people and users that have gone through the criminal justice system. Combined, the information that is presented in this report represents the voices of more than 17,000 Afghans that have shared their experiences and perceptions with us over the last five years to provide a snapshot of the current situation in Afghanistan and over time. We know that Afghanistan faces many rule of law challenges. We have seen recently attacks that have targeted human rights and healthcare workers. And the country is preparing right now to begin formal peace talks while simultaneously navigating the economic devastating effects and social effects of the pandemic. Identifying an address in rule of law issues related to corruption, human rights, security, the delivery of justice, the performance of the criminal justice system will be very important to successfully reform and recovery efforts in the future. So it is our hope that the data that we are presenting today serves as a tool to encourage data-driven policy choices and guide program development to strengthen the rule of law in Afghanistan in the years to come. With this, now I'm going to introduce my colleague, Amy Gritzkevitz, the World Justice Party Director of Criminal Justice Research, who is going to present the latest findings from the rule of law index in Afghanistan report Keep Finance 2019. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alejandro and Scott for your introductions and to USIP for hosting this event virtually since circumstances do not permit all of us to gather together in person. Thank you also to our esteemed panelists who are both joining us from Kabul to share their insights and experiences relating to the rule of law in Afghanistan today. I'm very excited to speak about some of the findings from our latest report which we published online just this morning and would also like to congratulate the WJP's research team for the final report. I've prepared a few slides to walk through some of the high level findings and I will share my screen now. Everyone see my screen? To provide some background context to the conversation we're going to have today about the current rule of law situation in Afghanistan, I want to first begin by providing a very high level snapshot of rule of law performance in Afghanistan and other countries in the South Asia region. The slide here features summary information from the countries in South Asia that were featured in the WJP rule of law index report released in March of this year. The index measures countries adherence to the rule of law in practice and compares scores and rankings for 128 countries around the world. Each country's overall rule of law score is shown here on a scale of zero to one with one signifying the highest possible score or strong adherence to rule of law. The table presented also highlights the percentage that this overall score has changed over the last year as well as the average annual score changed since 2015. With a score of 0.36 Afghanistan's overall rule of law performance is lower than what we see in other countries in South Asia. However, Afghanistan was the only country in this regional grouping that experienced an improvement in overall score over the last year in this case with an improvement of 4.3% which is also what showcased on the map of the slide. Looking at how overall country scores have changed across a larger period of time so going back five years we also find that the average annual score change in Afghanistan was positive at 0.7% since 2015. This means that although rule of law remains weak in Afghanistan some improvements have occurred over time. With this information as backdrop I'll now turn to the WJP's latest efforts to measure rule of law performance in Afghanistan specifically. The rule of law in Afghanistan key findings 2019 report is part of the series that the WJP produces annually. The latest iteration released this morning is the fourth edition of the report that we've released to the public. This graphical report explores different facets of the rule of law in Afghanistan as they are experienced by Afghans actually living in the country. Each page of the report is designed to be sort of a takeaway brief and cover different themes or topics of interest. These pages showcase responses to individual questions from various WJP surveys. The WJP collects survey data in Afghanistan each year and the latest edition of this report features new data as well as data from previous years to highlight how certain experiences and perceptions may have changed in the country over time. And because this report focuses exclusively on Afghanistan the WJP has been able to develop new and really innovative survey instruments and methodologies to explore different rule of law topics at a granular level. As an example of this the latest edition of the report features a new and in-depth look at the performance of Afghanistan's criminal justice system as Alejandro noted. Findings in the latest report are drawn from three data sources that the WJP collected in 2019. First we interviewed 3,019 households in a nationally representative survey. This survey provides first-hand information on experiences and perceptions of ordinary people across a variety of rule of law issues in the country including their dealings with the government the ease of interacting with state bureaucracy and also their experiences with bribery. Second we interviewed 24 in-country legal practitioners and academics with expertise in civil law criminal and constitutional law labor law and public health. We know that some questions are difficult for the general public to answer such as questions related to the efficacy of courts. So these surveys collect information on rule of law issues from practitioners who are frequently interacting with these state institutions. And third we interviewed 557 inmates in Afghanistan. The WJP was interested in collecting data that explored people's experiences throughout the criminal justice process in part because of the prominent role that the formal justice sector plays in ensuring that laws are both enforced and that the rule of law is implemented. Capturing experiences of people that interact with the criminal justice system is particularly challenging because it's difficult to identify a sufficient number of these individuals via a survey to the general public. And in many cases people that have gone through the system are actually incarcerated. The WJP therefore spent a year developing a pilot survey instrument and methodology to capture inmate experiences from the moment of arrest through the completion of a criminal trial. Inmate populations are extremely difficult to reach and publicly available data on inmates in Afghanistan are probably to no surprise of any of us extremely limited or nonexistent. We were able to collect data from inmates because of the willingness of the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs to permit this study and also of the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Centers to facilitate access to individual prisons. We are extremely grateful for that collaboration and would not have been able to conduct the inmate study or show any of these data anchored in real experiences without that support. In total five prison facilities were included in the pilot study and were selected according to the size of the inmate populations. Interviews were then distributed proportionally across the selected prisons and the individual inmates were selected using a simple random sample method. We were not able to enter facilities for women in this pilot so I do want to note that all of the interviews that were conducted and the findings that we'll be speaking about today relate only to those experiences of male inmates. And now turning to insights from the latest rule of law in Afghanistan report I'll begin by highlighting some of the findings from data we've collected from the general public. We see that Afghans perceive widespread corruption among authorities in Afghanistan. Each year we ask the general public a series of questions about how many authorities they believe to be involved in corrupt practices in various government institutions. This slide presents responses to those questions since 2014. Here the purple bars represent the percentage of Afghans who responded they believed all or most of a particular authority were involved in corrupt practices. Despite a small improvement over the last year, judges just the category displayed on the far left continue to be viewed as the most corrupt authority. I'm looking at responses over a longer period. Perceptions of national government officers have declined the most since 2014 with 48% of Afghans reporting that they believed all or most were involved in corrupt practices in 2019 compared to only 33% in 2014. Bribery victimization also remains common in Afghanistan. In the survey to the general public we ask Afghans whether they've had to pay a bribe to access various public services. This chart showcases the percentage of Afghans interviewed in 2019 that reported they had to pay a bribe in the last three years to access different services. Responses to these questions are broken down by region of the country to show how bribery victimization varied and the national average for each categories denoted by the orange dotted line on the chart. Overall, Afghans reported that they paid a bribe to obtain a government permit more than any other service. You can see that this varied by region of the country with the largest percentages in the west and southwest reporting that they paid a bribe for this purpose and the smallest percentage in the capital. And on average, more respondents in the southwest reported paying a bribe to access public services than in any other region. We also found that Afghans have mixed views on their fundamental freedoms. This chart highlights the percentage of Afghans in 2019 who reported they either strongly agreed or agreed that certain political media and religious freedoms are guaranteed in the country. Although a majority of the respondents, as you see here, believed that their political media and religious freedoms are guaranteed, perceptions varied within the categories. For example, within the category of political freedoms, you see that the largest percentage of Afghans agreed that they could organize around an issue or sign a petition, which was 75 percent. But the smallest percentage agreed that they could join any political organization that they wished, which was only 50 percent. Afghans also reported fairly low levels of confidence in the justice system in 2019. We asked the general public about how confident they are in the criminal justice system's ability to perform various services. Afghans were the most confident that the system is effective in bringing people who commit crimes to justice which is the 70 percent question featured at the top. But we're far less confident in all other aspects of the justice system's performance shown here. Afghans were less confident that the system deals with, or were the least confident rather that the system deals with cases promptly and efficiently, which was only 45 percent. And now for a more in-depth picture of the performance of the criminal justice system, I'm going to turn to some of the findings from inmates that we featured in our latest report. When we interviewed inmates, we asked them a series of questions in various modules to explore their experiences at different stages of the criminal justice process. For this presentation, I've pulled a handful of the higher level findings related to due process during different stages, but additional insights can be found in our report if you go to our website and download that. For the inmate data, we split data collected into two different groups to allow comparison to allow comparisons over time. The first group that you'll see featured on these infographics includes inmates that were arrested between 2017 and 2019, and the second group includes inmates arrested prior to 2017. This chart highlights average responses to a group of questions we asked about the arrest process and whether various procedures occurred. Comparing responses to these questions over time, we see that although due process during arrest is weak in Afghanistan, it has improved. On average, inmates arrested between 2017 and 2019 were more likely to report that they were informed of the reason for their arrest, that they were not verbally threatened, that they were not asked for a bribe, and that they were explicitly told that they were under arrest. And one other finding of note here is that although suspects inmates arrested between 2017 and 2019 were more likely to report they were arrested without violence, which is the final arrow that you see presented here, the percentage remained quite low. Only 34% or roughly one in three responded that their arrest occurred without any sort of physical violence. The inmate data show that it is common that suspects in Afghanistan are also not taken directly to law enforcement facilities immediately after being arrested. The left slide of this chart highlights the percentage of inmates that said they were not taken directly to a law enforcement office over time. We've shown these responses for three different law enforcement authorities so you can compare those experiences. Despite an improvement over time, roughly one third of inmates arrested between 2017 and 2019 still reported they were not taken directly to a law enforcement office. This rate was similar across each of the authorities that we've presented here. And this is an important finding. The WJP has done extensive research to evaluate Mexico's criminal justice system. And one thing we found in that work that is true in other countries as well is that it becomes much more likely that a suspect will be mistreated in some way if they're not transported directly to a police station or similar facility. And this is certainly something that we captured in the data we collected from inmates in Afghanistan. If we look to the data presented on the right for inmates that were not taken directly to a police station, these percentages show those inmates that then stated that they experienced some form of mistreatment before eventually arriving at an official location. Although we see a decline in inmates that were not taken directly to an official location over time, we don't see much change in the percentages that are then mistreated. The types of mistreatment reported by inmates that were not taken directly to an official location varied by resting authority. This chart highlights the five most commonly reported types of mistreatment on average. And for each of the law enforcement authorities shown here at the largest percentage of inmates reported being kicked, punched or beaten. That was the same for all three of these. And next we asked inmates about their experiences once they arrived at an official law enforcement facility covering topics including whether their arrest was documented and whether they were informed of their right to have an attorney. Although an overall adherence to due process after arrest is weak in Afghanistan, we again see that there have been some improvements over time here. The largest improvement over time was seen in the percentage of inmates that said they were not asked for a bribe. But despite the improvements noted, less than 50% of inmates arrested between 2017 and 2019 reported that they were informed that they had the right to an attorney, that they were informed they could remain silent and not answer a question and that they were allowed to contact a family member or friend to let them know where they were. So there's still a large opportunity for improvement based on these findings. And the final highlight that I'll show today relates to due process during the primary and appellate trials. We asked inmates who completed their primary trial a series of questions to explore how these experiences have changed over time. The top of this chart highlights changes we've seen for the primary trial and the bottom of the chart features changes over time for the same questions but at the appellate trial process. One notable finding here is that we see a large improvement in the percentage of inmates that reported they were given the opportunity to speak over time at both the primary and appellate levels. Although the World Justice Projects report features many other highlights, I'm going to end my presentation here so we can discuss some of these findings and trends with our panel a bit more in depth. I encourage viewers to download our latest report which is available on our website worldjusticeproject.com. Thank you very much, Amy. That was a great presentation. Lots to us for us to discuss. Before I turn over to Giselle for some initial comments and reactions, let me again remind the audience that you can ask questions either via Twitter at ROL Afghanistan hashtag ROL Afghanistan or on the comment feature on the YouTube feed. Giselle, over to you. Thank you, Scott. Hello, everyone. I'm very pleased to be part of this panel although only virtually and to speak about the rule of law in Afghanistan. First of all, I would like to congratulate World Justice Project for completing another report on the state of rule of law globally and one particularly on Afghanistan. I would also like to thank our colleagues at UCIP, the United States Institute for Peace for organizing this panel discussion today or tonight depending on where we are. Well, for many years the rule of law index by WJP has measured how countries adhere to the rule of law and how their citizens perceive rule of law. And this work has been done to advance rule of law around the world has very positively affected countries and their people. And I hope that this will continue to be the case in the years to come. As the almost person of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, I would like to welcome WJP's report. The report presents progress and challenges with regards to rule of law in Afghanistan. And I believe reports like this help the government of Afghanistan consider the findings when we develop and implement reform strategies and policies. Today I'll be speaking on three issues. Speaking of general state of human of rule of law and speaking about corruption because that's what I do. That's what my job is. And basically talking about the recent measures taken by the government of Afghanistan on anti-corruption. And also I would like to touch upon the rule of law in view of the current peace process and peace negotiations. The rule of law index provided both positive aspects and challenges with regards to rule of law in Afghanistan. And it indicated as our colleague Amy said it indicated a 4.3 percent of the positive changes overall in Afghanistan. This is not very significant but when you look at it especially in the regional context you see that while other countries in the region have not had much progress Afghanistan despite the insecurity the lack of stability and the ongoing violence has had this progress. So to us this is really positive. There have been other areas specifically the areas that have been positive and those included open government people's confidence in the national institutions protection of fundamental rights and freedoms perception of women in the society seemed to be quite positive and improvements in the criminal justice system. These were what I found as very positive or at least the areas where we had some progress in the report. But of course there were also tremendous challenges and there are areas that we still that we still need to improve and the areas where we still need a lot of progress. And those many of those I mean particularly were on corruption across different institutions but also security was where Afghanistan had the lowest of its ranking and of course security and terrorism have had their impact on borderline Afghanistan. I believe that both the positive trends and the challenges are not absolute. In my opinion the positive trends do not imply that we do not need to take further steps to bring further improvements and more progress and the negative aspects or the challenges part do not mean that there have not been any positive developments in those areas. Afghanistan has I mean we all understand we all know that Afghanistan has made huge steps forward since it came out of the civil war in the dark era of the Taliban. However ongoing conflict and insurgency as well as the endemic corruption have been major impediments for rule of law in Afghanistan to thrive. Afghanistan has suffered and has paid a huge cost to corruption and we all understand that and in the government we are cognizant of this fact. Corruption has not just damaged Afghanistan's reputation internationally but it has also weakened citizens trust and confidence in the government and in the government institutions the fight against corruption is of course an absolute necessity and it remains as it remains a major challenge towards meaningful rule of law in the country as it is a fundamental as it is fundamental for lasting peace in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan of course with the support from our international allies and partners there has been a lot of work done to improve the situation and to to bring some reforms to improve the lives of the citizens who face the plight of corruption almost every day and the report showed how many what percentage of citizens in different aspects of their life in different walks of life including the inmates had experiences of corruption. But the government is committed to reinforce its efforts to eradicate corruption in all different areas of the government but particularly in the law enforcement institutions because those are the very very key institutions that have to have very specific and fundamental reforms when it comes to corruption. And to do this the government has had a number of legislative as well as structural initiatives in place. One of those initiatives were is the office of the Ombuds person where I work and the office of the Ombuds person was exclusively established to look into allegations of corruption against high ranking government officials. And the idea was basically not just to increase accountability and transparency but at the same time to legally pursue those who boldly commit acts of corruption believing that they have impunity or that they can enjoy impunity because this has been one area where the government of Afghanistan has repeatedly been criticized and this institution is specifically designed to look into allegations of corruption of high governmental officials work very closely with the legal and judicial institutions and to ensure that the cases or the allegations of corruption are also pursued not just that the inspection is done and then the the prosecutorial and the judicial institutions do not take further action. Another very important initiative is the creation of the anti-corruption institution anti-corruption commission and the idea for that was to bring in all the anti-corruption efforts mainly on administrative corruption under one umbrella and this was also to realize Afghanistan's commitments towards United Nations Convention against corruption. The government has also established anti-corruption justice center. This institution has specialized police prosecutors and judges and again this is one place where they can actually from the time of arrest and inspection to prosecution to convection all of that happens under one roof and there has been a number of initiatives mainly on the open government aspects and this has been a priority for Afghanistan to ensure that the rule of law is delivered in a transparent manner. There have been a number of initiatives taken there that include ratifying a law on access to information creating the commission access to information commission to ensure the transparency of the information being provided to the citizens. There has been a significant improvement and increase in the role of civil society to both oversee government actions and also participate in different processes such as the law making process and also in the selection of a number of of key institutions. A very good example of that is civil society's participation in the anti in the selection of the members of anti-corruption commission that is due to be to be completed in the next one to two months and in this commission civil society both nominated or presented 50 percent of the candidates but at the same time they make 50 percent of the selection committee as well and this again shows Afghanistan's commitment towards having an open government and allowing civil society in public to do government oversight and of course there has been a lot of support from the government and also the space provided for free media and investigative journalism and that is what you see from time to time how different reports both on rule of law as well as corruption comes out of the media and then the government feels responsible to look at those and to do further inspections and investigations but are these enough? I mean one would ask are these enough? Certainly not as the reports reflected as we see the realities in the country there's a lot done but there's definitely a lot more that needs to happen if we really want to have a meaningful rule of law in the country and institutions have to be strengthened there has to be more transparency more accountability and I think the at different levels starting from the government officials to people they all need to accept or build together this culture of accountability and transparency and to ensure that neither the officials are corrupt nor people are silent about cases of corruption or when they become victims of corruption but that's my take on corruption issues and I wanted to briefly talk about rule of law and view of the peace negotiations and of course at the moment it's extremely important for us not to just focus on issues of rule of law in the current state of affairs but also think of the future in Afghanistan I think the very very pressing issue right now in Afghanistan now that we have passed behind the election and the announcement of the results I think it's important that the peace process and the negotiations right now which is the pressing issue focuses on the rule of law and I think it's not just the two parties to the negotiation but also international communities responsibility to ensure that the rule of law becomes an important point of the agenda for the peace negotiations we understand of course that the rule of law has been a major challenge for Afghanistan in the past years but it's important that we especially that we have experienced Taliban in their government it's important that we have guarantees in place for rule of law in a post peace settlement we need to ask ourselves the question how we can preserve the progress we have made so far even if the progress is significant in some parts and not so significant in other parts the question is how do we preserve that and how do we ensure not only that that process is lost or progress is lost but the rule of law is further is further strengthened of course peace in Afghanistan is everybody's desire you ask any Avon what is their priority the first thing that will come to their mind and the first answer would be peace and that is because we have lost so many people I mean look at the last couple of weeks in what number of people we have lost in this country from Kabul to Helmand to different other parts of the country and all of that takes people's in individual's lives but it has to be guaranteed that this process is an inclusive process we cannot have a process whereby it seems to be inclusive mainly for the insurgents and for the Taliban but then one which made a result in exclusion mainly of women or for example religious minorities and I think the achievements that we have had in the past couple of years we have to be very cautious of losing those and I would like to conclude that Afghanistan for Afghanistan's future we have to guarantee the rule of law we have to guarantee that the rule of law will not be weakened and for any future agreement we should emphasize on principles of justice on fundamental rights and more importantly freedoms and equality before the law I'll stop here I will once again thank our colleagues for this wonderful research and we'll be happy to respond to any questions thank you thank you very much because let me move over to Abdullah Amundzai for his comments and then also remind people I know there are questions coming in on the YouTube feed and through Twitter at ROL Afghanistan and I will take those after in the discussion Abdullah thank you Scott and colleagues at USIP for having me in this important discussion and thanks to our WJP colleague for the excellent presentation of the report a lot of the very important points were so I'll try not to be repetitive and across some of the talking points that I already had with me but without really attempting to compare percentages between the Asia Foundation's survey of the Afghan people and the WJP report since the two researchers are conducted under different methods one of the more common findings that I can see in several reports related to corruption in accountability is the perception of impunity remaining high in Afghanistan when we look at the Asia Foundation's annual survey findings it's obvious that the perception of corruption has remained quite high between 94% in 2006 and 97% in 2019 we also see in our survey that the perception of corruption as a problem in daily life has risen from 73% in 2006 to 91% in 2019 now to help contextualize these numbers I think it's crucial to seek answers to a rather difficult question which is what does these numbers really mean for Afghanistan and Afghans in my view all these numbers tell us that Afghans really deserve and demand better quality services transparency and accountability these numbers also tell us that people are more aware of their rights and I believe increased awareness can also contribute to issues being better amplified in the public domain freedom of expression and increased capacity among media and several society organizations also play a significant role in advocating for change and influencing decision making the recent proposed amendments to the law on media being reversed by the government is a great indication of the role that media and several society can play to influence change so overall while we see a relatively gloomy picture of Afghanistan in a lot of various studies conducted in the country on the brighter side here I believe we see a vibrant civil society and media who are able to raise their voice at the right time and proactively engage in discussions with the government on protecting the fundamental rights of people and demanding accountability access to information I believe is another key element in transparency in the public sector we have a law on access to information which I believe mandates the government to share key information on decision making with the people which can significantly reduce the potential for what I call the red tape luxury of every document being confidential I also think that this report and many others raise a fundamental issue which is that structures and systems of governance and justice need to be significantly strengthened to respond to the public demand for better quality services and accountability we see an increase in the number of young better qualified people being hired in the public sector mostly at senior possessions such change really needs to happen also at the service delivery levels which will enable improvements that people can see and feel when they interact with government officials on a daily basis this needs to continue while I believe investments in system development also need to be equally prioritized increase transparency and accountability finally I believe accountability must not remain optional for some and once we see accountability being equally applied for all I think that's when we can expect a more positive outlook on the public perception side of things as well as improvements in quality of life overall for efforts so I believe the report that WJP has generated the findings of this really informs key decision makers to be able to understand the fundamental issues that arise in the rule of law sector and the corruption in various sectors and how they could be tackled I think there is need for more sustainable and effective mechanism in which the empirical data collected based on facts and views received from people to decision makers so that we are able to see change based on realities on the ground rather than our own understanding of what the issues are and how we would like to have them addressed I will stop at that and then later during the Q&A session we could engage in a more in-depth conversation if time allows thank you Scott and thank you Great thanks each of you for excellent comments let me just pose a question to each of the panelists while we gather the full range of questions from the audience more publicly Amy if I can just start with you I think one of the key attributes and unique attributes of this survey is that you do it globally and you ask the same questions in many different countries and you seek to compare them and obviously one of the key issues is which countries is it appropriate to compare and you presented findings comparing Afghanistan to its region which is relevant I'm wondering more generally if you look at Afghanistan as the most majority country that's dealing with difficulty conflict over interpretations of Islam as well as a conflict country that has had high rates of violence are there comparators outside of the region that you might look to and then also what Afghanistan we know faces a lot of rule of law challenges there's incremental improvement but it's still quite poor compared to even its region I wonder what are the areas when you look globally that you can see signs of hope and where should we look in these indicators for the first signs of improvement to an old better overall score so what have been leading indicators in other countries of better performance overall on rule of law absolutely those are really good questions and I think that a lot of the conversations around rule of law in Afghanistan focus on overall poor performance and don't break down the conversation to highlight some of the things that have changed and improved over time so I'm happy that that's a question that you've posed and it's something that we can explore further on the panel in terms of looking at Afghanistan's performance compared to South Asian countries versus other potential peer countries the rule of law index report doesn't compare Afghanistan to other countries that are experiencing conflict instead we compare Afghanistan to other countries in the region and other income peer countries so countries with similar levels of economic development and the truth here is that Afghanistan is unique in a number of ways and that the situation in Afghanistan is unique the peace process that is ongoing presents its own challenges and some of the ongoing issues related to order and security so conflict and instability in Afghanistan are not captured in the same way in many other countries that we include in the index so a lot of the conversation that we have around Afghanistan and its performance and areas for improvement but also these beacons of hope that we point to relate specifically to Afghanistan and the context of the country in terms of things that we can point to for hope in Afghanistan there are many of the topics that I presented in the presentation of findings as well as that my colleagues have talked about so we know that fundamental freedoms that corruption and that the performance of the criminal justice system pose many challenges in the country but those are also the areas where we're seeing an improvement over time when we look at the rule of law index findings for the factor of absence of corruption specifically so this is the global report that compares 128 countries and isn't focused exclusively on Afghanistan but in this comparative exercise over the last year we saw that 51 countries experienced a decline in absence of corruption and only 26 experienced an improvement and Afghanistan was one of the countries that improved in that factor over the last year and these small changes that we're seeing are important many of them seem to hint at some of the more technical reforms in the country in particular related to criminal justice are having a positive impact and across the board and many of the survey instruments that we've collected and the analysis that we present in various reports we're seeing these small changes and rule of law change over time is a very long and drawn out process it often takes years so I think it's important when looking to Afghanistan and talking about the performance of rule of law in the country that we not only look at where Afghanistan is right now but compare where Afghanistan is now versus where the country was five years ago so although many challenges remain I definitely think that its performance related to corruption and criminal justice really offer areas of hope moving forward and it is too soon to see how this progress is going to be tested by the COVID-19 pandemic and that's one thing that I'll be particularly interested to explore in the coming months Thanks very much let me just turn to Ghazal if I can ask you a question I think when in looking at the survey one of the things that was encouraging was a relatively high level of legal awareness awareness of rights and in particular one both men and women had roughly the same understanding of rights and two many women had a high understanding of women's legal rights even if it's not observed in practice I wonder both in your role as well as your rule of law experience over time what do you see as the success of improved legal understanding improved rights understanding and what role does public outreach and communication from the government or from other organizations play in an overall improvement of legal rights I think you're on mute Yes sir Thank you Scott it was truly encouraging to see Amonison's improved ranking and the perception of people particularly of men on the legal rights of women in the society I would also like to add that it was also very encouraging and very very pleasant to see that a number of people in the survey or a huge a big percentage had discussed freedom of religious freedom of religious practice for religious minorities to be free there was some improvements in that area as well I think one major reason for that has been the tireless efforts both by the Amon government and the civil society I think the level of outreach they have had over the past 18 years in different parts of the country trying to promote women's rights as well as the investment that was done by the international community I think it's all of that together that's paying off and the result that we see today about women's advancements for example the examples that as I said give about women being in different parts of the government in leadership positions all of that explained to us that the current situation is significantly different than the post-tolavan period or than the the tolovans period so there's a significant change significant difference women have more access to justice now there's more legal protection to women whether we're talking about the protection in terms of having legislation or to put that into implementation and if they are if they have faced issues of violence for example there have been mechanisms and procedures put into place that together provide the legal protection to women and the women who work in the government at one point in time especially in the beginning there's a lot of focus on giving women seats in order to show that women are there and they're present but that picture has changed now women actually occupy seats and positions within the government because they possess the right skills and the right credentials and I think even because of all of these as well these are the achievements that we have and we should be very cautious of losing these as a part of the peace process thank you and Abdullah let me turn to you as well our related question you know you worked with the Asia Foundation's large survey over years you indicated that one of your conclusions from this is that Afghans are sending a demand signal and I'm just wondering what's your impression of the role that surveys from either this World Drugs Justice project or the Asia Foundation have on political leaders you know how does the how do these views manifest themselves in the Afghan context and what are the most effective ways that you think Afghans can really pressure leaders to make improvements on these areas that everybody agrees need to need to be improved thank you Scott I believe the use of survey and the attention by state authorities towards these reports generated by credible international and local organizations such as WJP and also the Asia Foundation's report on transparency international a lot of other organizations that really provide important information and channeling the public views to the government the use of such empirical data has gradually increased more so since 2014 I know multiple surveys and research reports were used more significantly by the international development organizations in the past compared to the Afghan government but we have seen a gradual improvement in that when the you the Afghan government is also looking at these reports and taking them more seriously I think there is need for more some kind of a systemic way where these reports are first communicated in more detail with the media organizations in Afghanistan and several society organizations for them to be able to articulate the issues better and advocate for change based on the empirical data and public views that they see in our reports so I think the use of these survey data research data needs to it has potential to be used more by the several society and media organizations for them to be better equipped for the advocacy role that they need with changes in the government structure great thanks for that let me turn now to questions from the audience and Amy I'll go to you for this one both Miriam Dwyer and also Suwara Khan asked questions about the prison survey in women and so we're not included they want to know why weren't they included why didn't you have access is there any way that you can speculate on differences that might have emerged and I don't know if you want to talk about your your outreach plans beyond this event in response to what Avila said absolutely so for the inmate study because this was a pilot and we only covered around 550 inmates we did not expand the scope to cover facilities that house both men and women we care a lot about confidentiality and about safety and security and for all of the inmate interviews that were conducted we had a fieldwork team that needed to enter the prison facility and it's important when conducting these interviews that we take into consideration any concerns about like the gender of the person that's going to be conducting the interview and just overall how this is going to work so we very much treated this exercise as an initial pilot to see what would and would not be feasible and what methodologies would work best in the country and it's our hope that this is something that could be revisited in the future could also be expanded to cover hopefully facilities that are housing that are housing women and another thing that we that we piloted that worked fairly well with this inmate study was the use of the electronic tablets so inmates could self-administer the study and to make sure that guards that might have been present in the room were not able to overhear responses to survey questions or that other inmates were able to hear confidential responses about sometimes very sensitive topics we also administered the survey via audio feed so the inmates could put a headphone on and the headset would read aloud the survey questions as well as the survey response options and so they would be able to make the selection that they chose without ever needing to verbalize or say anything out loud and we wanted to test to see how that worked before we scaled up this project or identified additional prison facilities or increased a sample size so it is certainly our hope that this is something that we can pursue in the future but for the purposes of the pilot study we stuck just to minimum security prisons that housed male inmates those are also the larger facilities so if we have field work teams that are needing to enter the facilities for multiple days that can become extremely disruptive so we wanted to minimize that for the purposes of this pilot okay thanks for that can we get another question from the audience and this maybe is for both Abdullah and Ghazal some people suggest that the Taliban would be far less tolerant of corruption than the current government has been is this a valid argument and more generally I would just add on how do you think justice issues or rule of law issues I should say might factor into negotiations either of you want to start with them Scott do you mind repeating the question please I'm happy to it was some people suggest that the Taliban would be less tolerant of corruption maybe more effective at combating corruption and what's your view on that as well as more generally how the Taliban might bring rule of law issues into negotiations well many of us I think a majority of Afghans have experienced the government of Taliban and we have seen in the past years the income in the illicit economy on the side of the Taliban so the lack of tolerance as it appears or as it's being publicized does not necessarily suggest that the Taliban are less tolerant to corruption once they are part of the government I wouldn't strongly believe in that and there have been many other examples of the Taliban with the illicit incomes that would prove that this may not necessarily be the case in terms of how the Taliban would part of the peace process so far we have seen certain certain positions from the side of the Taliban although not specific they've never got into the specifics of how the rule of law or how a system of justice might work for the Taliban but of course we have seen it we have seen it in the last in the last 18 years through media and through people bringing in cases of Taliban's courts and their way of decision making I think that summarizes the whole the whole ideology or the whole way of looking at rule of law when it comes to the Taliban a rule of law also requires or it has inherited equality before the law and fundamental rights and human rights and we have seen that repeatedly how there has been this lack of equality when they have treated people be it a matter of men, women be it religious minorities so if you look at different notions of rule of law and then you see how the Taliban have acted in practice I think it becomes very clear that they do not really believe in the way we understand and we believe in rule of law and therefore that increases the level of concern among people and therefore we require the guarantees as a part of the peace process to make sure that the rule of law even as I said earlier even if we consider the current progress significant at parts and not so significant in other parts we still need to preserve this and have guarantees in place that these will not be lost thank you thanks for doing it do you want to comment on that? Yes sure I think to Reza's point past performance great indicator for what to expect from any side when it comes to service delivery tolerance towards malpractices or corruption so I will leave it at that but just one point on rule of law formal justice versus informal justice sector in Afghanistan I think if our formal justice sector continues to to provide services in the manner that it has been providing in the last two decades the likelihood of people really looking for alternative is much higher meaning the alternative exists and that's the informal justice sector now the question of whether in the informal justice sector we have Taliban representation in or influence or a village elder that's a that's a different scenario but depending on a locality region where the disputes and issues are so I think because alternative does exist to the formal justice sector that's why it's of utmost importance for the justice reforms to take shape and improve quality of justice that is offered to to the people of Afghanistan otherwise the level of trust among people on the formal justice sector will continue to decrease and as a result people learn a few days of resolving their disputes which is not necessarily a very transparent but it is a speedier way of resolving disputes thanks and you anticipated my next question which is coming from the YouTube feed which relates to the distinctions that the survey may have made between formal and informal justice and so let me turn that toward Amy to see how did you account for that and I would also note that there are some interesting differences in levels of trust of different institutions which Dullo alluded to and I wonder if you can add some evaluation of that factor to your answer absolutely and this is something that we've also seen in our data when we approach the inmate study we of course wanted to really hone in on experiences and perceptions of the formal criminal justice system and not capture sort of what this adjudication process looks like in the informal system and we know that that plays a huge role in Afghanistan and the country's ability to deliver justice Afghans go to informal mechanisms for a number of reasons it could be including that those are more accessible to them but also they don't have high levels of trust in the formal criminal justice system as we've seen for the findings that I've presented in the presentation today and that are also included in our final report here we're asking specifically about perceptions and performance of the the formal criminal system in 2016 we conducted a study that aimed at looking at what these perceptions and experiences were like with individuals that chose to use informal mechanisms so of those people that had to dispute what were some of the more common types of disputes in Afghanistan we saw land disputes and water disputes being two of the most common and then why did or which system did they choose to go to so when you have this complaint are you going to a formal system for some sort of adjudication process or are you pursuing resolution in an informal system and we saw that a large number of Afghans were pursuing these informal mechanisms and some of the reasons that they cited for doing so was that they didn't trust the formal systems ability to to provide justice and a lot of our findings related to the formal criminal justice system in Afghanistan haven't changed a ton over time so the perception is still that many of the actors involved in the system are a corrupt or involved in corrupt practices and Afghans don't have a lot of faith in the system's ability to to provide justice for the country so these these improvements that we're seeing in experiences from inmates are small compared to the big picture of how Afghans actually perceive these systems to be functioning in the country Thanks. Let me go on to different subjects so Doug Grindel asks on the question feed about the UN's recent enormous release in anti-corruption report and says that they cited that the anti-corruption committee has not yet been implemented since 2018 and that there are several reports of the MEC the monitoring and evaluation committee which looks at corruption that have not come out I guess on schedule there's a related question from Scott in New York that also cites the UNAMA survey and notes that on the one hand the government is praised for its cooperation on providing information but yet at the same time and as all you noted this there's still a challenge in terms of following through on prosecutions so maybe I'll turn it to you Gizal to ask about the UNAMA anti-corruption report and how the government can address some of those concerns Thank you Scott Yes, UNAMA's report was released last week and it was looking at anti-corruption and also the challenges one thing that was important in UNAMA's report was that it indicated vote to the government as well as the international community that corruption was not their number one priority in 2019 because of the political landscape in Afghanistan and the focus being more on elections as well as the peace process the anti-corruption commission has not been established yet although we do have the law on anti-corruption that specifies the role and the powers of anti-corruption commission but as I said earlier the process is ongoing for the selection of the members of the anti-corruption commission and the committee the selection committee includes 50% from civil society as well as the number of candidates it took a while between the government and civil society to come into terms on how to create this mechanism to ensure that civil society is well involved both in terms of introducing candidates as well as being part of the selection committee of course the COVID-19 pandemic had affected all of us globally and the work of the government as well and that's one reason why we have the government has delays in with regards to anti-corruption commission in terms of the prosecution of the cases yes again Yunama's report has raised concerns and we are aware of the concerns that are raised not just by Yunama but by other partners and colleagues as well and as I explained earlier we're working on creating a mechanism whereby cases of anti-corruption are followed up in the prosecution and in the judiciary we do respect the independence of the attorney general's office they are an independent institutions we do respect the independence of judiciary as an independent branch of the government but at the same time in order for us to have some results in the long term we have to follow up on the cases of corruption this is going to start once the law on the office of Yunama's person is approved and this power officially gets to the office of Yunama's person the monitoring and evaluation committee the MAC is a very important anti-corruption institution they have presented a number of extremely important and timely reports trying to look at the corruption vulnerability assessment of the different institutions and there was some delay again because of the situation we all know and recently as of last week from what I remember they presented two of their reports to the High Council for Rule of Law and both the reports one on the Ministry of Finance mainly on the departments of revenues and customs and one on the on the government authority of Afghanistan and both the reports were highly welcomed by the government and the president himself he has instructed he has instructed the team and particularly his senior legal advisor to actually look at the implementation of the of the recommendations by MAC and to report to the High Council of Rule of Law and anti-corruption periodically so the government has there was some delay in presenting the reports the MAC reports to the government but now that they're there the institutions the relevant institutions have been instructed to ensure that the recommendations are implemented Thanks very much we have just a couple minutes remaining and I want to ask one final question on behalf of the audience and that's from Jeff Rico who asks whether there are linkages between reduction and corruption with improvements in institutions of governments excuse me institutions of governance as well as criminal justice systems so I guess maybe I'll give Abdullah a chance to reflect on that from your personal experience in Afghanistan whether anti-corruption is a function of institutional performance or other factors and Amy maybe give you the last word on what are your thoughts on that from the global survey perspective I think when it comes to the justice sector anti-corruption efforts one of the main issues that we have seen at about these 18 years of the post-Aman era was the multiplicity of the initiatives when it came to anti-corruption efforts by the Afghan government I think over the ability to basically make sure that there is a more holistic approach and a comprehensive approach in dealing with anti-corruption issues that would result in a more efficient way of systematically addressing corruption but yes I think there's a very obvious linkage between the perception of corrupt practices in an institution and improvement and their service delivery or whatever the institution is mandated to do Ministry of Education is one great example in our survey when we ask respondents what goes well in their area they immediately allude to schools and the services that they get in as a result from the Ministry of Education and the same applies to drinking water and Ministry of Health for example so people do see and acknowledge improvements when they actually receive it the perception in some cases might vary because a certain government institutions probably need to do better with regards to their public awareness campaigns telling people what they have improved and how they have improved them but primarily when it comes to public opinion I think when people see a service or a change in their lives they do acknowledge it positively about it as is the case in our survey Thank you for that and Amy let me give you the last word on your reflections on that as well as any other concluding remarks that might have Absolutely I definitely concur with my colleague when you are looking at issues related to corruption these play out in a number of different ways across various aspects of rule of law and we know that if people believe that an institution or the people operating within that institution are corrupt they are less likely to actively engage with that institution they sort of from the outside discount it which is part of the problem and part of what we see with Afghans relying on informal justice mechanisms they do so because those are trusted they believe that they are more likely to have an outcome that is just if they use those institutions compared to more formal ones so perceptions of corruption as well as experiences with petty bribery and other forms of corruption really impact rule of law as a whole these are definitely connected and another interesting thing that we do see sometimes in the survey data not just in Afghanistan but globally is in situations where there are high levels of corruption when there is a new change this switch to tackle and address those issues and this information is out in the news there's often a perception that corruption has gone up in a country and it's not necessarily because anything substantially has changed it could just be because in the rule of law situation there's now some process that's happening in an attempt to correct this so we see perceptions of corruption really playing out and most of the rule of law factors that we cover in the rule of law index and this is a particularly salient link I think in Afghanistan great well thank you very much for that I would also add that of course the comparative nature of this survey across other countries and different income levels is important but also the fact that it's done in a series over time really helps to track performance and help Afghanistan or other countries with improvement so I hope this keeps going that's all the time we have for now I want to thank everybody that has participated actively that has watched through YouTube through other media channels from joining us thank you for joining us in this conversation thank you very much to the panelists for being up late in Afghanistan and taking your time and we hope to continue this conversation with the World Justice Project and at other events at USIP thank you