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Speaker: Dr. Sima Samar, former Vice President and Minister of Women Affairs, former Chair of AIHRC and member of the High Level Panel of UNSG on IDPs. Dr. Samar is an Afghan human rights advocate, activist and social worker who served as Minister of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to July 2002. She was the Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) from 2002 to 2019. From 2005 to 2009, she served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan. In 2011, she was part of the newly founded Truth and Justice party. In 2012, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for “her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world.” From November 2021 to December 2022, Samar was a Visiting Scholar at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School for Government. Currently, she is a Visiting Scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

This event is organized by the Harvard Kennedy School Student Pakistan Caucus and co-sponsored by the Mittal Institute, HKS Women and Public Policy Program, HKS Center for Public Leadership and the Center for International Development at Harvard.