Afghan Youth Debates: What's the Point of Voting?

Election officers on the panel of an IWPR youth debate in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were challenged by audience members on whether there was any point on voting at all.

The event was the latest in a series of events held at universities around Afghanistan as part of programme work designed to increase youth participation in the presidential and provincial elections scheduled for April 2014.

One student asked what Afghanistan had gained from elections held since 2001 in terms of national security or economic progress. In answer, Abdul Aziz Akrami, provincial public relations officer for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, blamed the electorate itself for making poor choices in the past.

Fazel Khaliq Lalmwal, dean of the law and politics faculty at Kandahar University, said previous elections were run by the international community, which had its own agenda and backed certain candidates accordingly.

Turning to the forthcoming elections, another member of the audience asked what a very low turnout would mean for the legitimacy of the outcome. Lalmwal replied that the turnout level should not make any difference.

Someone else argued that in remoter parts of rural Kandahar, many people were totally unaware that they had a right to vote.

On this point, Akrami said public awareness programmes were important, but necessarily took time. He argued that such work could only happen after a complex series of steps. First, “the security situation must be stabilised in the villages so as to give people opportunities to access basic education, and then they should be provided with information about the elections.”

A student then asked what would happen if the 2014 elections failed to result in changes to people’s lives. Naqibullah Wali of the Independent Election Commission replied that voting implied the right to kick people out as well as put them in office.

This report was produced as part of Open Minds: Speaking Up, Reaching Out – Promoting University and Youth Participation in Afghan Elections, an IWPR initiative funded by the US embassy in Kabul.