As the international community commemorates the 80th anniversary of the United Nations, Afghanistan remains entrenched in political deadlock, grave human rights abuses, economic turmoil, and widespread humanitarian suffering during the Taliban regime. Recognizing the critical juncture at which Afghanistan finds itself, there is a pressing need to reevaluate and strengthen international engagement through an inclusive and participatory framework, where all Afghans feel included. The Mosaic Approach, introduced through UNAMA’s Comprehensive Framework, represents a potential important pathway to address these challenges; however, it requires significant recalibration to ensure inclusivity, accountability, and transparency.
This event will discuss the status of the UN’s "Mosaic Approach", highlighting opportunities for reinforcing Afghan-led solutions, expanding democratic and representative spaces, safeguarding human rights—especially those of women and marginalized groups—and ensuring the Afghan people's aspirations are central to international engagement.
There are various approaches to help strengthen the current process by including diverse Afghan representation and civil society organizations, enhancing the accountability metrics, and prioritizing human rights values and inclusive governance.
This event will engage policymakers, Afghan civil society representatives, human rights experts, and UN stakeholders to identify actionable recommendations and outline concrete steps toward a more robust, participatory, and accountable Mosaic Approach.
Objectives:
- To review and discuss the current UN’s "Mosaic Approach" and propose substantive improvements, emphasizing inclusive governance and meaningful participation of diverse Afghan representation.
- To highlight the urgency of developing clear, measurable benchmarks and accountability mechanisms for any engagement with the Taliban.
- To underscore the importance of a participatory approach involving Afghan civil society, women’s groups, youth representatives, and minority communities.
- To advocate for a human rights-centric framework that prioritizes women's rights, political inclusivity, and democratic governance.
Speakers
Amaney A. Jamal is Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She is the former Director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Jamal directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development and the Bobst Center-American University of Beirut Collaborative Initiative.
Jamal is the co-founder and co-principal Investigator of the Arab Barometer Project (Winner of the Best Dataset in the Field of Comparative Politics (Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Dataset Award 2010), and has secured over $5 million in grants for this and other projects from the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative, National Science Foundation (NSF), NSF: Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences, Qatar National Research Fund, United States Institute of Peace, the International Development Research Centre, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Henry Luce Foundation.
In 2006, Jamal was named a Carnegie Scholar. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (2003). Her areas of specialization are the Middle East and North Africa, mass and political behavior, political development and democratization, inequality and economic segregation, Muslim immigration (U.S. and Europe), gender, race, religion, and class.
Isabelle Rome was appointed Ambassador for Human Rights responsible for international issues relating to the Holocaust, looted property and remembrance in May 2024. Throughout her career, she has held senior positions within the French judiciary and was appointed Minister delegate in charge of Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal opportunities from May 2022 to July 2023.
As Minister, Isabelle Rome launched three Governmental plans regarding gender equality, the fight against racism, antisemitism, discrimination based on origin and against anti-LGBT+ discrimination. She also actively contributed to the implementation of several laws and measures to better prevent and punish gender-based violence and support its victims.
From 2018 to 2022, Isabelle Rome served as the senior official in charge of gender equality at the Ministry of Justice. She previously held various positions as a criminal judge and presided over criminal courts.
From 2000 to 2002, she advised the Minister of Justice Marylise Lebranchu on judicial protection of young people, assistance to victims and access to rights. She was previously Head of the Crime Prevention and Security Unit at the Inter-ministerial Delegation for Cities where she acted as UN expert on crime prevention and was tasked with laying the foundations of the European Crime Prevention Network.
Isabelle Rome has been actively involved in NGOs, providing support to drug addicts, political refugees, and cultural associations in prisons. In 2003, she founded Femmes de Libertés, an association for women, which she chaired for 12 years.
Isabelle Rome is a graduate of the National School for the Judiciary (ENM) and holds a diploma in Private law.
She has authored several books and published La fin de l’impunité ("The End of Impunity") with Editions Stock in early 2024 and Jouer ou tuer (“Play or kill”), with Editions Michalon in 2025, offering new avenues for reforms to better combat violence against women.
Lotfullah Najafizada is a Journalist & CEO, Amu TV an international media outlet for Afghanistan that he and his colleagues founded after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. At Amu, Najafizada and his colleagues are trying to revitalize free press in Afghanistan by connecting Afghan journalists in exile with those who are inside the country and providing free and unbiased reporting for the Afghan people. Najafizada’s nearly two decades of journalism experience includes leading TOLOnews TV from 2009 to 2021, where he led the largest news operation in Afghanistan for over a decade and conducted many high-profile interviews with global leaders. Among many recognitions, One Young World awarded him the Journalist of Year Award for 2022, Paris-based Reporters without Borders awarded him with the medal of Press Freedom Hero in 2016, TIME Magazine profiled him as a Next Generation Global Leader in 2016, and Forbes magazine selected him among the 30 under 30 Asia influencers in media in 2017. Najafizada was the only Afghan journalist who attended two rounds of civil-society talks with the Taliban in Doha in 2019 and in Oslo in 2022. He was formerly a fellow with the Institute of Politics, University of Chicago from 2021 to 2022, the Asia Society in 2012, the Rumsfeld Foundation in 2016, and the World Press Institute in 2010. He has a BSc in economics. He’s married and has two children.
Pashtana Durrani (Boston, MA) is an Afghan human rights activist and community development expert whose focus is girls’ education. Durrani is the founder of LEARN Afghanistan (@LearnAfg), a grassroots organization established to safely and securely provide education to girls through a distributed network of tablet computers using an offline platform. Through LEARN, she has educated 7,000 girls and boys in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and trained more than 80 teachers in digital literacy. LEARN also focuses on girls’ health, and has trained 700 girls in menstrual hygiene management.
Durrani was named an Education Champion by the Malala Fund for her outstanding work to advance Afghan girls’ education. She was a global youth representative for Amnesty International and a board member of the steering committee for the Global Environment Facility, an international partnership to address pressing environmental concerns. She is also a winner for the 2021 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Emerging Leader prize, which recognizes leaders who have addressed complex global challenges in innovative ways. Her outstanding work placed into The BBC’s 2021 Most Influential Women list, as well as the 2021 #Times100talks. Learn more at www.learnafghan.org.
Nazeela Elmi is a Research Fellow at RWI supporting the mandate of UNSR on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan. She recently served as a Professional Specialist at the Afghanistan Policy Lab at Princeton University. Nazeela holds a Master’s degree in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University. Previously, she worked with the Centre for Information Resilience – Afghan Witness, conducting open-source investigations and human rights monitoring, with a particular focus on the surge in women’s suicides and honor killings. Nazeela has contributed to global policy discussions, engaging with high-level experts on Afghanistan’s evolving political and humanitarian landscape. Her scholarship critically analyzes the status of human rights and the situation of women under the Taliban rule. Her research interrogates dominant narratives and explores gender issues through an intersectional lens, with particular attention to women’s resistance movements, the gendered impact of forced displacement, and youth engagement in peace and justice initiatives. Nazeela was one of the ten Rapporteurs who drafted the outcome document of the 12th UNESCO Youth Forum.
Dr. Nilofar Sakhi is a faculty member at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She is also the President of the Andiana Foundation, a think tank focused on security and peace, and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
A distinguished scholar and policy analyst, Dr. Sakhi specializes in security, conflict resolution, geopolitics, and peacemaking. Her recent book, Human Security and Agency: Reframing Productive Power in Afghanistan, along with her latest publications on transnational security challenges in Afghanistan and the broader region, offers a comprehensive analysis of the ongoing security crisis.
A former Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Sakhi has held several prominent positions, including Director of Policy and Diplomacy at McColm & Company; course coordinator and instructor at the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service Institute; Country Director at the Open Society Foundations; and Executive Director and Trustee at the American University of Afghanistan.
Her research work has been supported by fellowships at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the National Endowment for Democracy, Columbia University, and the International Center for Tolerance Education. She has written extensively on issues such as transnational and regional security, militancy, human security, the politics of peace, and interstate conflict, and continues to be a regular voice in policy discussions on these topics.
Parwiz Kawa is a journalist, media specialist, and civil society activist with over 20 years of experience in journalism and human rights. He is a founding member and Executive Director of Hasht-e-Subh Daily, Afghanistan’s largest newspaper, and served as Director of North America bureau of Afghanistan International TV in Washington, DC, from 2021 to 2023. A two-time recipient of the “Journalist of Courage and Impact” award by the East-West Center (2018, 2022), Kawa is also an advisor to the Afghanistan Journalists Centre (AFJC) and a jury member for the Journalist of the Year annual award in Afghanistan.
Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.
