This brief underlines the common themes and issues raised in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the National Action Plan for the Woman of Afghanistan (NAPWA), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Afghanistan’s National Action Plan for the implementation of the United Nations’ Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1326), referred to as NAP 1325. The key purpose of this brief is to draw the attention to the fact that there are adequate provisions for women’s rights in all of these policy instruments, individually and collectively. It is now time to act on the promises of these policy statements, starting with defending the gains made by and for Afghan women since 2001.

Policy outcomes often fall short of policy intentions. Despite globalization and regionalization, in many cases national problems, policies, and politics emerge and traverse through varying modes of locally evolved governance mechanisms characterized by a range of clearly discernible formal and informal institutions. Efforts to operationalize supra-national or global policies or visions such as the Millennium Development Goals continue to be simultaneously supported and curtailed at the local / national scale by the institutions through which governance is exercised in different contexts. Drawing on numerous studies on the discrepancy between policy outcomes and policy objectives, this paper articulates a framework for conducting governance-oriented, institutionally informed policy analysis in politically and socio-economically heterogeneous environments.