Hodei Sultan currently coordinates and provides oversight in the development and planning, financial management and gender programming outreach for the Afghanistan and Pakistan program. Previously, she worked with USIP's Afghanistan and Pakistan Priority Grants programs on soliciting, reviewing, and developing grant proposals with Afghan and Pakistani civil society organizations.

She has worked with USIP since 2009 and also teaches two undergraduate level courses at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) on peacebuilding & conflict resolution and peace & stability operations. Prior to joining USIP, she worked with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on counter-trafficking and migration work on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Publications By Hodei

Taking a Terrible Toll: The Taliban’s Education Ban

Taking a Terrible Toll: The Taliban’s Education Ban

Thursday, April 13, 2023

By: Belquis Ahmadi;  Hodei Sultan

Last month, a year after the Taliban banned Afghan girls from receiving secondary education, another school year began in Afghanistan — the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to school beyond the primary level. Since the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover, the group has sought to marginalize women and girls and erase them from virtually every aspect of public life. After a March 2022 ban on high school education, the Taliban also barred women from attending university at the end of last year. In a series of interviews with USIP, Afghan mothers, female students, schoolteachers, and university lecturers spoke of the terrible toll the Taliban’s actions have taken on their mental health.

Type: Analysis

GenderHuman Rights

Afghan women have made real progress—just ask Roya Sadat.

Afghan women have made real progress—just ask Roya Sadat.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

By: Hodei Sultan;  Asma Ebadi

A generation of women have grown up in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was overthrown in 2001. Whether it’s in education, healthcare, culture or government, women have seen steady progress throughout Afghan society in the last 18 years. And those who have lived through the Taliban’s misogynistic rule, like Roya Sadat—the first Afghan woman film director and producer in the post-Taliban era—fear that all this progress could be discarded in a peace deal with the Taliban.

Type: Blog

GenderPeace Processes

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