In 2009

In its first year of existence, AHRDO carried out a variety of different initiatives, all of which aimed at building the staff's technical and organizational capacity to run a grassroots organization and implement community-based theatre activities with different groups of people. In addition, efforts were made to build relationships with different national and international stakeholders and organizations with the aim to firmly integrate AHRDO into a wider network of Human Rights organizations in Afghanistan and around the globe. In terms of the concrete arts-based activities, the most significant initiative was a 10-week community-based theatre capacity building training for AHRDO staff and representatives from a total of 15 Afghan and international NGOs and Civil Society organizations. This in-depth training was facilitated by AHRDO and conducted by four international community-based theatre experts from Colombia, Germany/Bolivia, Switzerland and the USA. The training focused on Theatre of the Oppressed and Playback Theatre and also provided first on-the job opportunities for the training participants and especially the AHRDO staff to practice their newly acquired skills. Apart from the training, AHRDO collaborated with a variety of national and international organizations to produce a Human Rights Radio Play “Speak Truth to Power”, implement a mobile theatre initiative focusing on the 2009 presidential elections and use different forms of community-based theatre as well as a scripted play “AH 7808”(an adaptation from a play, AH 6905, by Irish playwright Dave Duggan) to promote spaces for discussion on the issue of Transitional Justice in Afghanistan. Importantly, AHRDO became a member of the nascent Transitional Justice Coordination Group, an umbrella network of different national and international organizations working with Transitional Justice in Afghanistan.

In 2010

After the successful first year, the second year was spent consolidating and expanding AHRDO's activities both in Kabul and in other parts of the country. After constantly struggling to attract funding in 2009, important international donors were now interested in supporting AHRDO's theatre activities. Consequently, a wide range of different initiatives were carried out focusing on working with different victim's groups as well as widow's and women's organizations. In terms of the former, theatre was used to contribute to ongoing human rights abuse documentation and truth telling efforts, while the latter were involved in Afghanistan's first Legislative Theatre project, in which women from different parts of the country used different interactive theatre techniques to elaborate suggestions for legislation on women's issues. Besides, AHRDO's wrote and produced its first scripted theatre play, Infinite Incompleteness, based on victims' personal stories of loss during the past three decades of conflict. A particular important event was AHRDO's trip to Rwanda and Uganda in July 2011. Four staff members met different Rwandese victims's groups, visited a refugee camp in Uganda and conducted a series of theatre workshops with theatre groups and victims associations from Rwanda. Finally, AHRDO deepened its engagement with the Transitional Justice Coordination Group, became one of its core members and played a leading role in organizing Afghanistan's first so-called Victim's Jirga, in which victims organizations from different parts of the country came together in Kabul to discuss how to deal with the legacy of massive human rights violations in the country.

In 2011

AHRDO's activities have continued to create spaces for bottom-up dialogue on sensitive community issues in different parts of the country and abroad. The Legislative Theatre initiative started in 2010 was expanded to five different provinces involving several thousand women from all walks of life. The truth telling and documentation efforts were equally deepened with the establishment of six Victim's Councils in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif. What is more, AHRDO opened up a second office in Mazar-e Sharif, where a series of community-based theatre training workshops and performances were conducted for new AHRDO staff as well as representatives of different victim’s organizations. Besides, AHRDO participated in the organization of Afghanistan's second Victims Jirga and performed Infinite Incompleteness as part of the official program. Finally, members of AHRDO travelled to Belgium, Germany, Turkey and the United States of America to present some of their  human rights, documentation and theatre activities, work with Afghan refugee communities, took part in international conferences about Transitional Justice and Afghanistan and met and briefed high-level policy circles on the situation of human rights and women rights in Afghanistan. 

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