The Afghanistan Access to Justice (AA2J) project was designed during the last months of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 as the successor project to the Justice and Human Rights in Afghanistan (JHRA) project. During a consultative process with national counterparts and donor partners, it was decided that the focus of AA2J would be to increase access to justice for vulnerable groups, with women, children, detainees and prisoners as specific target groups. The AA2J project has three substantive output areas, namely; Legal aid and legal awareness; Justice sector coordination with a focus on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW); Capacity development on human rights and legislative drafting for the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and Justice Sector Reform.

The project became operational on 1 April 2016. The first months were mainly a project inception period that included recruitment of staff, development of the implementation plans and establishment of the project’s governance structure. Actual implementation started in August 2016, after receiving the first donor contribution.