Page 43 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

Women’s rights are human rights

question in the chat box as well with regards to kind of making feminist
foreign policy functional.

So I was thinking of India’s policy towards Afghanistan. And if India was
to adopt a gender sensitive foreign policy with regard to Afghanistan, what
might that look like. And in fact what came to mind is also, India often does
not mention other countries in its statements at the Security Council, at
these debates at WPS. And Afghanistan is the only country from the region
that comes up with regard to policy implementation. And in that respect,
it could be as concrete as ensuring that women take part in the peace
negotiations. We know that there was so much conversation on the fact that
there were very few women in the Intra-Afghan dialogue.

And so taking a stand there, promoting participation of women, or
when India provides development aid to Afghanistan, making sure that
there is gender budgeting there. That there is, when those, say if there is
infrastructure, then it takes into account gender sensitive aspects of that
infra structure development. So I am not here talking about western versus
non-western idea, but really just giving concrete examples of what India
might want to do in this respect. Thank you.

Amb. Nirupama Rao Thank you. I see that Swati is back with us, because I think she had dropped
(Chair and Moderator)
off due to internet problems. But she is back with us. Swati, would you like
to add to those comments, which Soumita just made? I wonder if you heard
the question.

Dr. Swati Parashar Yes I did. Thank you. Very quickly because we do not have much time. I think
it is important to not also, while I still stand by my critique of both WPS
and FFP now, we will legitimize the acronym. I still think that it doesn’t
help to just strictly consider it as a binary thing, that there is something
called as non-western-west you know. We are operating in a different space
on that. We need to be vigilant and constantly scrutinize. But I wanted to
tie up everything to this, what we can effectively do to change patriarchal
cultures right.

If India was to adopt a gender sensitive foreign policy with
regard to Afghanistan, what might that look like..... promoting
participation of women, or when India provides development aid
to Afghanistan, making sure that there is gender budgeting there. 43

A GENDER-SENSITIVE INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY Why? and How?