Our guest on this episode is USIP Research Fellow, Zinaida Besirevic, a Ph.D. candidate in human development and cognition at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation compares children and adults in their reasoning about violations of Human Rights and infringements on human dignity. Together we discuss if moral reasoning changes with development, and whether and why we become more likely to tolerate harm.
Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed their own interpretation of Islamic law onto the people of Afghanistan and consistently rolled back human rights protections — especially for women and girls — all while the country struggles to recover from decades of conflict and economic crisis. USIP spoke with Fatima Gailani, the former president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, about the various ways Afghans can put pressure on the Taliban to reclaim their rights and demand a better future.
In Afghanistan, obtaining accurate data on the number of persons with disabilities — including gender-disaggregated information — has always been a challenging endeavor. But based on the data we do have, it’s clear that more than four decades of violent conflict have left a considerable portion of the Afghan population grappling with various forms of disabilities, both war-related and otherwise. And the pervasive lack of protective mechanisms, social awareness and empathy surrounding disability continue to pose formidable challenges for individuals with disabilities, with women being disproportionately affected.
Unfortunately, children born as a result of conflict-related sexual violence have been overlooked in the international community’s peacebuilding agenda for a long time. Eunice Otuko Apio, a member of Uganda's Parliament and a finalist for USIP’s 2022 Women Building Peace Award, discusses why children born of war have historically been marginalized in peace processes, how resources can be used to support them and their families more effectively, and how women can contribute to peacebuilding more broadly.
While some parts of the Afghan economy managed to stabilize in 2023, poverty continued to increase and now stands at 69 percent of the population. Kanni Wignaraja, director for Asia and the Pacific at the U.N. Development Programme, discusses UNDP’s efforts to build resilience in local markets and promote women-owned enterprises in Afghanistan; explores ways to navigate relations with the Taliban; and examines how the decline in international aid is affecting humanitarian efforts in the country.