Region: Afghanistan
Azizullah "Aziz" Royesh
Azizullah "Aziz" Royesh is a leading advocate for equal access to primary and secondary education and Founder of Marefat High School for Afghan refugees in Pakistan. With a focus on critical thinking and human rights, the school flourished and eventually moved to Afghanistan in 2002, where it now teaches more than 3500 Afghan students, about half of whom are girls. Marefat High School has become a highly respected and well-known model for a new approach to community-building in Afghanistan. Aziz has written textbooks on humanism, human rights, democracy, social studies, and Quranic interpretation and is a frequent speaker on the concept of a tolerant community. Aziz and his colleagues established…
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Christopher Lockyear
Christopher Lockyear is Secretary General of MĂ©decins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), where he directs MSF's offices around the globe. Before this he was Director of Operations for Action Against Hunger, the leader of the global movement to end life-threatening hunger. Previously, he was Operations Manager at MĂ©decins Sans Frontières (MSF) where he was responsible for the strategy and implementation of MSF’s humanitarian response and staff in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and South Sudan, managing around 3000 people. Chris started his humanitarian career in 2005 as a Water and Sanitation Engineer in Darfur, Sudan. Since then, he has lead operations across Africa and Asia including in Somalia, Pakistan, South Sudan, Chad,…
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Mohammad “Musa” Mahmodi
Mohammad “Musa” Mahmodi is a human rights lawyer and defender based in Kabul, Afghanistan. He served as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission for ten years, providing strategic direction for programs and activities to monitor, protect, and promote human rights in a conflict-affected country. As part of his work, he focused on transitional justice, women rights, children rights, human rights education, and investigations of human rights violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict. Musa also advocated for reviews of laws and policies of Afghanistan to comply with the international human rights instruments. He previously worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, whereby he…
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Habib Rahman
Habib Rahman is an influential policy maker and a senior researcher and analyst for Hambastagi Consultancy Group (HCG) in Afghanistan. HCG plays an active role in building a secure, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan, by strengthening institutions and programs in both the public and private sectors. To achieve this goal, HCG draws on two types of organizational assets. He previously served as a senior policy advisor to Minister Mohammed Haneef Atmar in several government ministries, including Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Education, where he played a pivotal role in developing the first National Educational Strategy for the post-Taliban education of 6.2 million boys and…
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Alexander Evans
Alexander Evans is a Professor in Practice of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. A career diplomat, he has worked as an advisor to the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street, Strategy Director in the Cabinet Office, and Director Cyber in the Foreign Office. He has served as British Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to India and (briefly) Pakistan, led the United Nations Security Council expert group on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban, and was a senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in the U.S. Department of State. He has also been the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, a Senior Fellow at Yale, and…
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Michael Ward
Michael Ward is on the Board of Directors of Commissionaires Ottawa in the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, the largest group of security companies employing veterans in Canada. He previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Associate Director General for the Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services. A Major General, he was previously Deputy Commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, responsible for the development of the Ministry of the Interior and training of the Afghan National Police – one of the international community’s critical priorities for capacity building in Afghanistan and key to establishing a secure environment that will permit the reemergence of civil society and sustainable development. Prior…
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Orzala Nemat
Orzala Nemat is Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and an Afghan political ethnographer and a senior teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has two decades of experience in development practice, research, programmatic review, and academia. She is the founder of Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan, was a guest scholar at the Cher Michelson Institute in Norway, and has worked with different international organizations including ICCO in the Netherlands as its country representative in Afghanistan. Orzala has served on the boards of national and international development organizations in Afghanistan and is currently a trustee of…
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Jovitta Thomas
Jovitta Thomas is a community development expert from India, specializing in development work in fragile and conflict states. In her over 20 years of international work, largely in the Balkans and Afghanistan, she focuses on helping new/ transitional governments design and implement very large development initiatives covering the sectors of local governance, poverty reduction, community development, conflict management, emergency support, and core public services. Her expertise is focused on implementing projects in highly volatile environments and adapting international best practices to local contexts. In the Balkans, Jovitta worked to remove parallel structures and integrate minorities into the judicial system of the newly independent Kosovo. In Afghanistan, she was first Deputy…
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Fatema Jafari
Fatema Jafari is a women’s rights advocate and public official working as a member of the Provincial Council of Herat for more than 10 years, where she serves on a number of committees related to women’s rights in Afghanistan. As the head of the family support committee for three years, she facilitated the creation of an umbrella group of roughly 80 women’s organizations to help coordinate their efforts. Previously she participated in three Loya Jirga Assemblies (consultative councils) for peace and security issues from 2009–2013 and recently the Peace Loya Jirga in April 2019. She has worked on several advocacy campaigns opposing violence against women and has pressed for greater…
More InformationEpisode 47: 2020 World Fellow Musa Mahmodi
Musa Mahmodi talks about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, why he became a lawyer, his work as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and the peace process in his country.
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