Please join us at our 2022 Annual Meeting, when UNA-NYC will celebrate our accomplishments over the past year, and our guest panelists will discuss the role of the United Nations in Afghanistan in addressing current issues of girls’ education and women’s rights.

With the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 2001, Afghanistan made great strides in the expansion and promotion of women’s rights and girls’ access to education. This came after the fall of a Taliban Government which imposed rules that essentially subjugated women to the role of second-class citizens in their country while forcing many girls to pursue their education underground — an action which meant as much as risking one’s life.

When the Taliban illegitimately took power by force in August 2021, they did so promising a more moderate approach to the pre-2001 regime. As of May 2022, however, schools for girls from grades 7 to 12 remain closed despite numerous Taliban promises on reopening these at the start of spring, and new policies, including those limiting women’s attire in public, are being implemented.

Even though exchanges have taken place between Taliban and officials from other countries, the de facto authorities remain unrecognized with their assets frozen internationally. The international community has further underscored numerous times that recognizing would be contingent on the Taliban establishing an inclusive government that recognizes and promotes the rights of all men and women of the country.

As the Taliban fail to heed this call, the effect of the international community’s strategy in helping address the backsliding of girls’ education and women’s rights in Afghanistan can be called into question. In the middle of this situation, the United Nations has remained active in the country seeking to alleviate the humanitarian situation in the country being also in contact with Taliban authorities.

Given the role of the United Nations as a neutral intergovernmental entity mandated to maintain international peace and security and promote human rights and development, this panel will discuss the role of the United Nations in Afghanistan and how it can best leverage its authority to attempt to address the degradation of women’s rights in the country and the continuous limitations placed on girls’ access to education.

Naheed Farid
Member of Afghanistan Parliament, House of Representatives

Naheed Farid is an Afghanistan parliamentarian in-exile, Chairperson of House Standing Committee for Women Affairs, a professional specialist at Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs-APL and Advisory Board Member of U.S.-Afghanistan Democratic Peace and Prosperity Council (DPPC).

Elected to Parliament in 2010 as the youngest-ever elected politician and lawmaker in Afghanistan, Naheed has worked tirelessly to engage Afghan youth and women in the nation’s political process.

She is a George Washington University Alumni, Forbes Magazine awardee, a Model Citizen of Grassroot-Diplomat magazine, and an Italian Distinctive Brave-Knight Medalist.

Since the Taliban takeover in August of 2021, Naheed has spoken on various platforms such as the United Nations, UK Parliament, EU Parliament, U.S. Congress and media to advocate the matter of human rights in Afghanistan.

Ambassador Trine Heimerback
Deputy Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations in New York

Trine Heimerback took up her post as Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations on 28 September 2020. Her previous position was Minister and Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva 2017-20.

Ambassador Heimerback has served in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2004 and has served as Policy Director at the Prime Minister’s Office in Oslo, Assistant Director General in the Department for Security Policy in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senior Adviser at the Secretariat of the Norwegian Foreign Minister. Ambassador Heimerback was posted to the Norwegian Mission to the UN in New York 2006-10.

Ambassador Heimerback holds an M.A. in Political Science from Uppsala University, Sweden and an LLM from the University of Warwick, UK. She is married and has two children.

Gran Hewad
Resident Fellow, Afghanistan Policy Lab

Gran Hewad is a researcher with around two decades of focus on policy research and communication. He has written for the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), USIP, managed the research department of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), and focused on socio-political transformation and conflict analysis. International relations, democratic change, radicalization, political economy, and youth issues were among the many topics he covered.

Gran also worked in various government agencies, including the Afghan Parliament and Ministry of Foreign Affairs Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, where he served as Spokesperson and Director of Communication and Public Affairs.

He recently joined Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) as Resident Fellow, where he will be centered at the Afghanistan Policy Lab.

Gran has a BA in Economics and an MA in Peace and Conflict Transformation.

Storai Tapesh
Founder and Director, Tapesh Foundation

Storai Tapesh, founder and director of the Tapesh Foundation, is a dedicated womens rights and human rights activist, with extensive development and programming experience within civil society, international organizations, and UN agencies.

She is the former chair and board member of the Afghan Women Social Protection Organization (AWSPO), member of CEDAW technical committee of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Director and Senior Program Manager of Afghan Women’s Network (AWN).

Ms. Tapesh has designed and led several programs and initiatives that advanced and promoted WPS agenda, women’s role in decision making, gender equality, governance, access to justice, accountability, transparency, and implementation of national and international frameworks such as UNSCR 1325, CEDAW, SDG goals, and BPFA.

Over 10 years, her range of experience includes organization expansion, development, management, and policymaking with profound skills in programming, lobby, advocacy, leadership, networking (alliance building), monitoring, research, and capacity building.

Moderator
Ambassador Adela Raz
Afghanistan Policy Lab Director

Adela Raz is the director of the Afghanistan Policy Lab, created in April of 2022 by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and the Liechtenstein Institute for Self-Determination (LISD).

The Afghanistan Policy Lab aims to help build an inclusive, peaceful, and prosperous Afghanistan that represents all its citizens equally. Academic fellows from Afghanistan, who worked previously in support of U.S. government efforts there, will collaborate with members of Princeton SPIA’s academic community on policy relevant research. The fellows will also analyze and provide policy recommendations to address challenges from the evolving situation on the ground in Afghanistan including policies impacting humanitarian aid, women and girls, and national healing and reconciliation.

The new lab’s director, Adela Raz, previously served as Afghanistan’s last ambassador to the United States from July 2021 through February 2022, after which the office was abolished. Prior to that post, she served as the United Nations Permanent Representative from Afghanistan and as the Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Cooperation of Afghanistan.

Raz characterized the lab as a “unique and very important initiative, to elevate the policy discussion and conversation about Afghanistan at this extremely important and critical time for the country.”

Its central focus is to “protect the gains of the last 20 years,” she explained, and to “get out of the political and humanitarian crises that the country is in right now.”

Since the lab seeks out those with diverse views and backgrounds, Raz emphasizes the importance of gender balance in the lab’s work, as well as people in different areas of expertise, such as those who have worked in civic spaces, the media, the security sector, the civic society, and the development side.