Featured Member: Ahmed Wali

What are your current organizational affiliation, position, and location of work? What are the current objectives that your office or department pursues?

I have worked as a Humanitarian Values and Organizational Development Officer for the IFRC in Afghanistan since 2005. In this role, I cooperate closely with the Afghan Red Crescent Society. Organizational development in this context means building the capacity of the Afghan Red Crescent Society in order to enhance its ability to cope with challenges and to provide better service to the most vulnerable people affected by natural disaster. This is a typical activity within the IFRC’s mandate. In these capacity building activities, I engage with different sections of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, mainly with youth and volunteers. My work is concerned with the development of membership and the fostering of humanitarian values. I assist the Afghan Red Crescent Society in building a strong volunteer network among youth, reaching out to them via schools and communities.

I feel this work is quite important: today’s youth in Afghanistan grows up during tough times. More than 30 years of war have resulted in a culture of violence and hostility. Furthermore, widespread animosities between the various ethnic and religious groups, gender discrimination, and stigmatization of mentally and physically disabled persons add to the complexity of the social challenges in Afghanistan. By promoting humanitarian values towards youth volunteers, we try to decrease the culture of discrimination, stigmatization and violence and encourage the community to seek tolerance, mutual understanding, and peaceful modes of co-existence.

Currently, the youth program of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, with the financial and technical support of the IFRC, is implemented in 22 branches reaching out to 300 boys’ and girls’ schools and 23,000 youth students, who serve as volunteers. The IFRC also supports 17 youth clubs of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, in which young people learn about Red Cross and Red Crescent history, the fundamental principles and values, the spirit of voluntarism, and certain school subjects. The youth clubs also provide good opportunities for youth from different backgrounds and ethnicities to sit together, exchange ideas, and develop mutual understanding and friendship. Similar activities are carried out at a smaller scale in the 50 youth corners in 52 boys’ and girls’ schools in 15 Afghan Red Crescent Society branches.

The promotion of Humanitarian Values is an integral part of the youth program. Together with the Red Crescent volunteers, the youth explore International Humanitarian Law (IHL) through their activities in youth groups, youth clubs, and youth corners. In this regard, the PHAP Core Training on IHL and the Thematic Workshop on Islamic Law and the Protection of Civilians, which I am presently attending here in Amman, are very relevant to my work. They are not only enhancing my knowledge of Islamic law, and of how civilians are protected under it, but also bringing to my consciousness the ways in which Islamic rules correspond to IHL and match with it. I am planning to address these issues with the audiences at my work.

Apart from implementing these activities, however, I also have a monitoring role in other training that the Afghan Red Crescent Society delivers, for example training of youth volunteers. I support the training facilitators in developing concepts for the courses, and train them as facilitators. I will continue to work in this position for another three years.

What was your first professional experience in humanitarian protection, and what path that has led you to your current position?

I used to be a youth volunteer myself when I was in school. Later, in 1997, I became a first aid supervisor with the Afghan Red Crescent Society in Southern Afghanistan. After that, I worked as a community-based first aid supervisor, recruiting and training first aid volunteers in Kandahar. The volunteers came from their villages to attend the ten-day training course on first aid and then went back, now with the capacity to deliver first aid to their communities. I did this for over two years until I joined the ICRC in Southern Afghanistan in 2000.

What do you particularly love about you work, what keeps you inspired?

I have worked in Afghanistan with the National Society, the ICRC, and the IFRC. Although they are different organizations and I worked in different capacities, all my work was within the same movement and everything I did was related to humanitarian assistance. I like the overall sense in this movement of being humanitarian at the heart. I enjoy serving the community, the human being, regardless of race and ethnicity, purely according to human need - to help the most vulnerable. I feel for all human beings, and I feel that I should act and do something. I like this feeling and I am proud to assist others when they are in need.

What do you experience as a professional challenge?

There are many constraints. Afghanistan as such is a challenge...! In regard to security, to the accessibility of remote areas, the lack of capacity on the side of our working counterparts, and the high turnover of staff.

What is PHAP to you?

PHAP is a new experience to me. I have just recently discovered it, and am just taking the first training course. I heard about PHAP from a colleague in India, who suggested the training on Islamic Law to me because it was relevant to my work. My boss also liked the idea. Hence, I am still very new to PHAP. I am planning to look through the different materials on the website. What I already see is that PHAP is a forum to exchange ideas and to learn. I realize that, just like me, many of my colleagues would need the kind of training PHAP offers. Therefore, I am certain that PHAP will play an important role for my organisation in the future.