The sustainable development goals and the EU development and cooperation policy : the case of the empowerment of women in Afghanistan

Abstract

The Development and Cooperation Policy of the European Union is a key area of its external relations, and billions of Euros are channelled to developing countries yearly. In this aspect, the European Commission plays a crucial role, managing and implementing the policy on behalf of the EU. Nonetheless, the literature assessing the policy effectiveness of the EU in this field is scant, and the role of the Commission is often undervalued. Parallel to this, the literature proves conclusively that, for a development policy to be effective, it needs to holistically integrate the key issues of gender equality and female empowerment, also captured by the 5th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). This dissertation aims to both contribute to this literature gap, as well as to evaluate the EU’s commitment to the 5th SDG, using Afghanistan as a case study. This is done by taking the available aid programming documents within the current financial period as the primary sources for analysis.

A mixed-method approach, using content analysis, qualitative analysis and descriptive statistics, is adopted to answer the original research question, ‘To what extent does the EU development policy in Afghanistan conform to the fifth Sustainable Development Goal and its Target Indicators?’.

Overall, the results provide a positive assessment of the EU’s commitment to gender in its development policy in Afghanistan, and showing a consistent improvement when compared with older studies. Nonetheless, there is substantial room for improvement, as the attention given to female empowerment is somewhat conservative, and not equally balanced across all the 5th SDG targets.