On July 12th, 2023 the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative, in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy in Manama and Bahrain FinTech Bay, held a first workshop in a series of four events for the Win Fellowship’s first cohort launched in Bahrain in June. The event, which took place both in-person at Bahrain FinTech Bay offices and virtually, focused on female leadership in the country.

The opening notes were delivered by empowerME’s chairman Amjad Ahmad. Keynote remarks were provided by H.E. Shaikh Abdulla Bin Rashid Al Khalifa, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States, and David Brownstein, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Manama.

The event encompassed a moderated discussion featuring esteemed panelists: Jordana Semaan, Head of Human Resources (Gulf and Asia), Global Head of DEI, Investcorp; Nidal Al-Basha, Head of Public Sector Innovation, Amazon Web Services MENA Region; Hollie Griego, Global Wealth Investments North America Head of Strategy & Platforms, Citi; and Marwa Al Saad, Executive Director at Human Capital, Mumtalakat Bahrain, with Suzy Al Zeerah, Chief Operating Officer, Bahrain FinTech Bay, skillfully moderating the session.

These panelists shared profound insights on the current state of gender equality in Bahrain, the successful initiatives and strategies propelling this progress, the remaining challenges, and the influential role of corporate initiatives in endorsing gender equality and promoting women’s leadership within Bahrain’s business landscape.

Key discussion points

Amjad Ahmad, Chairman of the empowerME initiative at the Atlantic Council kicked-off the event by introducing the remarkable achievements of Bahraini women in education, workforce, and politics. Women in Bahrain make up 83 percent of tertiary school enrollments, 54 percent of the public sector workforce, and 45 percent of leadership positions in official state agencies. In the private sector, women comprise 35 percent of the workforce, hold 17 percent of board seats, and occupy 35 percent of managerial roles. The political landscape is no different, as Bahraini women made major strides. They make up 20 percent of the total members of the Council of Representatives and 25 percent of the Shura Council. Ahmad emphasized that these achievements are the result of a number of factors, including government policies that promote gender equality, the strong educational attainment of Bahraini women, and the increasing participation of women in the workforce.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador H.E. Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid Al Khalifa expressed his strong support for the WIn Fellowship, noting its role in exposing Bahraini top women entrepreneurs to life-changing networking opportunities, mentorship, and workshops, thereby increasing their economic participation. He also highlighted the significance of the transformation brought about by the Supreme Council for Women (SCW Bahrain), which has been instrumental in implementing legislative and societal safeguards for Bahraini women. As a result of these reforms, Bahraini women account for about 43 percent of the labor force. Continued progress is being made in areas of pay equity, entrepreneurship, pensions, and the enhancement of women’s physical and psychological well-being. Furthermore, His Highness underscored Bahrain’s commitment to digital inclusion, manifested in the government’s initiatives to train women in digital skills and motivate them to pursue STEM fields.

David Brownstein expressed his support for the WIn Fellowship, asserting, “we’re incredibly proud to support the WIn Fellowship here in Bahrain. Bahrain is a place where seeds flourish when planted.” He also pointed to the shared goals between the U.S. Embassy and the Bahraini government, with both parties aiming for a peaceful and prosperous state. “Achieving this requires the active participation of all society’s members”, he noted. He also affirmed the U.S. Embassy’s commitment to supporting Bahrain’s national strategy on gender equity and addressing inequality.

The panelists all agreed on Bahrain’s success in promoting women to all levels of the workforce and representation in government and boards, attributing this to both government reforms and a workforce that acknowledges women’s potential. They also recognized persisting challenges, like widespread biases against women, underscoring the necessity of a robust peer-to-peer network of women advocating for each other.

When asked about the factors that have contributed to Bahrain’s high ranking in gender parity among Arab countries, Nidal Al Basha stated several key aspects. Firstly, he mentioned the role of encouraging women to pursue STEM spatializations, which has been instrumental in promoting gender equality. Additionally, he emphasized on the importance of a supportive work environment that grants women extended maternity leaves, ensuring a balance between their professional and personal lives. Al Basha explained that Bahrain offers additional benefits for women, such as dedicated nursing rooms in the workplace, demonstrating a commitment to meeting their specific needs. The implementation of inclusive hiring and promotional policies also plays a significant role in enabling women to succeed and advance in their careers, according to Al Basha.

Marwa Al Saad emphasized further how Bahrain recognizes the immense value of human potential, considering it as one of the most valuable and inexhaustible resources. She stated that the high gender parity in Bahrain is attributed to various factors. “There is a mindset shift in the country that prioritizes growth and development, fostering an environment where both men and women can flourish,” she explained. Bahrain has also implemented robust policy and program reforms that establish a solid foundation for the advancement of all genders. These initiatives created equal opportunities and a supportive framework for individuals to thrive in various sectors. Al Saad also mentioned an exciting new initiative; the Bahrain Defense Force, which further demonstrates Manama’s commitment to gender parity and inclusivity. This initiative showcases the country’s dedication to providing equal opportunities and encouraging the participation of all genders in defense-related fields.

Jordana Semaan, from her side, mentioned that the one lesson that other countries in the region can learn from Bahrain is the emphasis placed on women and celebrating their success stories. “The importance of representation cannot be understated, as it serves as a significant motivator for other women to enter the workforce and unlock their full potential”, she said. By showcasing accomplished women and their achievements, Bahrain inspires and encourages others to pursue their goals and make significant contributions in their respective fields.

Hollie Griego focused on the importance of allyship among women, highlighting how it empowers and propels them into higher positions within the workplace. “Citi, following a similar approach to Bahrain, recognizes the significance of recruiting, training, and retaining women in its workforce” according to Griego. She pointed to the implementation of mechanisms that create an environment where women can thrive, allowing them to strike a balance between their roles as working mothers and providing the flexibility necessary to forge a successful career path leading to long-term security. These mechanisms serve as valuable examples that any country can adopt to promote gender equality and support women’s advancement.

Additionally, the panelists discussed the changing perception towards women in tech sectors, demonstrated by the increased hiring of female engineers at Amazon Web Services. They gave the example of the vital role supportive mechanisms at the workplace play in facilitating women’s advancement into senior roles, enabling them to balance their roles as working mothers. The importance of role models was also stressed, regardless of gender.

When asked about the challenges faced by Bahraini women, similar to women globally, Semaan referred to a UNDP report stating that 9 out of 10 people hold biases against women. This bias is present in both men and women, and is a significant obstacle to overcome. Semaan  explained the importance of alliances and support networks among women, highlighting their role in addressing these challenges. “In this region, there is still a cultural expectation for women to take on caregiving roles,” she pointed.

Al Saad further emphasized the importance of implementing gender-inclusive solutions to address these challenges, while Al-Basha focused onthe importance of mental health support for both women and men, as well as the significance of programs that help women re-enter the workforce after being on leave.

Griego acknowledged that while Citi is one of the few institutions with a female CEO, there is still much work to be done to address the gender pay gap at senior levels and promote women into those roles. She emphasized the significance of mentorship for women, as it plays a crucial role in guiding them through their professional journey and career growth.

Suzy Al Zeerah additionally pointed to the absence of sufficient female role models and mentors in Bahrain and in the Middle East in general.

Closing remarks

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, Bahrain stands as the second highest in terms of gender parity among the Arab countries. This achievement is due to several important themes that have emerged throughout the discussion.

The commitment to supporting working women, as evidenced by extended maternity leave suggests an understanding of the importance of balanced work-life dynamics. This is also apparent in private sector policies, especially in terms of maternity leaves like in the case of Amazon Web Services, among others that are trying to create an enabling workplace for women to join. Research did actually prove that paid maternity leave increases women’s labor force participation and entrepreneurship, thus affecting the country’s’ economy in general.

An equally significant development in Bahrain’s gender equality journey is the strategic emphasis on digital inclusion and the promotion of women in STEM fields. Bahrain is a frontrunner in technological diversity in the MENA region. Digital activities contributed to 8% of Bahrain’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, demonstrating the nation’s committed efforts towards enhancing digital inclusivity. As for the digital gender disparity, it is minimal in internet access (1.1 percent), while none-existent in mobile accessibility.

Furthermore, around a third of the broader ICT workforce in Bahrain are women and approximately 20 percent of startup founders are women, higher than the global average. Given the traditionally low representation of women in the global tech sector, Bahrain’s encouragement of female participation is a drastic step towards a more balanced gender equation.

Role models and allyship were discussed during the workshop. Both are important for women’s economic advancement. Afterall “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Championing female leaders in sectors such as tech and defense can potentially disrupt existing barriers, opening doors for future generations.

Despite this progress, Bahraini women, like many in the region, continue to face a variety of legal, regulatory, and sociocultural obstacles to economic participation and leadership. Initiatives to address this discrepancy are necessary for future growth and development. These barriers highlight the need to invest in women skills, establish strong networks, and develop clear metrics to measure progress in supporting women.

The private sector plays a key role in improving the condition of women and increasing their leadership. For example, the gender pay gap in Bahrain is prominent in the private sector-US$2,300 versus US$1,700 for women compared to only US$200 in the public sector-. Institutions need to actively work towards increasing female representation in leadership, by prioritizing the recruitment, training, and retention of women, play a critical role in creating a more equitable business landscape, concluded the speakers.

The discussion overall underscored Bahrain’s commitment to gender equality and its innovative approach to tackle this issue. However, it also highlighted the persistent challenges that need to be addressed to ensure lasting progress. The workshop served to place Bahrain’s journey as an inspiring model for other nations grappling with similar issues.

Lynn Monzer is the Associate Director with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Nibras Basitkey is the Program Assistant with Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

WIn Fellowship cohorts

Jun 14, 2023

The WIn Fellowship 2023-2024 cohort

Building on the success of its inaugural cohort, the Women Innovators Fellowship (WIn) is expanding to Bahrain and the UAE, in addition to Saudi Arabia, as it continues to empower more women entrepreneurs from the Middle East. The program is thrilled to announce this year’s eighty-six recipients of its 2023 WIn Fellowship. The participants will receive a year-long program of executive education, mentoring, and networking opportunities in collaboration with Georgetown McDonough School of Business and with the support of the United States embassies in the three target countries and PepsiCo.

Feb 24, 2023

2023 WIn Fellowship Roadshow

The WIn Fellowship roadshow is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, UPS, and PepsiCo. The WIn Fellowship Roadshow participants, chosen from a highly competitive cohort of more than thirty applicants, receive a fully sponsored trip to the United States for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US business and government leaders.

Jun 14, 2023

WIn Fellowship 2023-2024 Bahrain

The empowerME initiative is happy to present the 2023-2024 WIn fellow cohort from Bahrain. These women entrepreneurs will build on their leadership and executive skills to scale their startups to new heights.

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The Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative‘s workshop on destigmatizing failure and promoting business risk through policies and culture in Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region was held on Wednesday, July 12th from 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET/6:00-7:00 pm Bahrain. The WIn Fellowship is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough […]

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empowerME

empowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and youth and building coalitions of public and private partnerships to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation.

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Roya Rahmani and Melanne Verveer discuss Afghan women as the way forward and how the international community should engage now, nearly two years after the fall of Kabul. (Rahmani and Verveer’s biographies are below.)

• During the twenty-year US intervention in Afghanistan, metrics gauging women’s health and education and women’s presence in local and national politics all improved.
• Since August 2021, those gains are at risk of reversal. Women’s rights have deteriorated, and the international community’s efforts to engage with the Taliban and support Afghan women have been unsuccessful.
• Carrots such as international recognition and sticks such as public condemnations and threats of NGO withdrawal have proven ineffective, yet these strategies are endlessly recycled.
• The international community and multilateral organizations remain disengaged from strategic policymaking, passively supplying humanitarian aid without directing funding toward strategic future goals.
• The West lacks both knowledge of and leverage over Afghanistan’s leadership.

Establish a more robust forum for international consultation. Ad hoc consultations aren’t working: Regular meetings of experienced representatives need to be established. The core group should include the United States, the United Kingdom, several European Union countries, key Islamic countries such as Qatar and Indonesia, and NGO and multilateral representatives with on-the-ground knowledge.

Keep security strategy at the heart of engagement. Place the security implications of women’s oppression on every agenda of every meeting. As society disintegrates further, more room is created for terrorist groups to flourish, as shown by the growth of the Islamic State group’s offshoot ISIS-K.

Send female diplomats and delegations from Islamic countries. Bilateral engagement should feature overwhelmingly female delegations and prioritize consultative meetings with Afghan women to hear their perspectives on community needs. Furthermore, Islamic countries and organizations need to be key partners in the West’s efforts for humanitarian relief and overall engagement. Not only do they have the expertise and credibility needed to engage and advise on practical mechanisms for the implementation of programming, but direct engagement between more moderate Islamic countries and the Taliban could be influential. Qatar is a particularly important partner because of its role as an international interlocutor with access to the highest ranks of the Taliban.

Use aid as leverage by strategizing beyond immediate relief. Shifting Western aid from a focus on emergency humanitarian assistance to more sustainable, large-scale economic development initiatives reorients the sense of dependency from the people to the Taliban regime, which also creates a new potential point of leverage for the international community. Donors should craft aid distribution networks that are more local and grassroots, and use creative approaches to keep women at the center of all aid initiatives. This could mean developing aid programs specifically for widows, forming local partnerships that explicitly require the adoption of female-specific tasks.

Take advantage of the internet, and prioritize development projects that keep Afghans connected. Unlike during the 1990s Taliban regime, most Afghans have a mobile phone, internet access, and social media. These new tools must be used proactively by the international community to disseminate key information about the Taliban’s failures, coordinate mobilization, and provide educational resources. Development projects focused on connectivity and subsidizing local media will help keep information flowing into and out of Afghanistan.

A personal note

“While the regime stays in power, concrete steps have to be taken within the current context to counteract urgent security threats, provide critical aid, get children back in schools after a year-and-a-half gap, and address other imminent issues. Recycling policies from 1996 will not work. After twenty years of societal transformation, Afghanistan is a fundamentally different place.

Without innovation, no progress can be made.

Similarly, without engagement, no progress can be made.

Like other Afghan women, my entire life has been shaped by one conflict after another. Born on the eve of the Saur Revolution, I lived through the Soviet invasion, the Civil War, and the Taliban’s 1990s rule. Until the intervention, each chapter that unfolded was heartbreak anew. The revival of democracy and freedom brought hope. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was even more painful and shocking than anything before because it shattered an era that had been characterized by so much progress.

I have fought for women’s rights my whole life: the right to go to school and have an income, a voice, and autonomy. I am deeply disturbed and angered by what Afghan women are currently experiencing, and I share the instinctive desire to disengage from Afghanistan entirely given the Taliban’s inhumanity—or at the very least condition aid on women’s rights. However, this does nothing to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. People simply suffer. Ultimately, we must be doing all that is possible to save lives. It is my hope that this report can help to make the road ahead clearer. The futures of so many Afghans—young girls banned from school, women imprisoned in their own homes, and an entire generation whose dreams have been crushed—depend on what we do now.”

—Roya Rahmani

Like what you read? Check out the full report here:

Ambassador Roya Rahmani has over twenty years’ experience working with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. She currently serves as a distinguished fellow at Georgetown University’s Global Institute for Women Peace and Security, the chair of Delphos International LTD, a global financial advisory firm based in Washington, DC, and a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Rahmani was the first woman to serve as Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States of America and held the role from 2018 to 2021. She was also the first woman to serve as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Indonesia, serving from 2016 to 2018. She holds a bachelor’s degree in software engineering from McGill University and a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.

Ambassador Melanne Verveer is executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, and board director at the Atlantic Council. Verveer previously served as the first US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009. She coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women, traveling to nearly sixty countries. She worked to ensure that women’s participation and rights are fully integrated into US foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the administration’s development of the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. President Obama also appointed her to serve as the US Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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Public Event Wed, June 28, 2023 • 3:00 pm ET

USAID Administrator Samantha Power on advancing LGBTQI+ inclusive development

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – A conversation on the United States’ efforts to advance global LGBTQI+ human rights and USAID’s commitment to global inclusion.

Human Rights Resilience & Society

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speaker

Samantha Power
Administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Moderator

Jonathan Capehart
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the Washington Post and MSNBC

VICENTE GARCIA: Hello. Welcome to this special Pride edition of #ACFrontPage. I’m Vicente Garcia, senior director of engagement and external affairs at the Atlantic Council, and we’re delighted for today’s conversation featuring USAID Administrator Samantha Power on a topic important to me as a member of the LGBTQI+ community, but also to the Atlantic Council in our mission to shape the global future together through US global leadership and global engagement.

Today’s conversation will be led by Pulitzer-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart, who is the host of his own show on MSNBC, serves on the Washington Post Editorial Board, and a frequent commentator on PBS, and the list goes on. We welcome participation by those here joining us today in person during our Q&A session, but also welcome those joining online by using the hashtag #ACFrontPage.

Administrator Power, thank you for joining us here today. We’re very eager to hear from you about the Biden administration’s and USAID’s priorities at addressing global LGBTQI+ human rights. And so now I’ll turn it over to Jonathan to lead our discussion. Thank you.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thank you very much, Vicente, for the invitation to be here. Thank you all. One more thing, Vicente. As someone who reads teleprompter for a living, I really felt for you because that print is so small.

SAMANTHA POWER: Yeah, seriously. We’re just old, dude.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I know, it’s true, given the distance. But thank you very much for that introduction. And, Administrator Power, thank you very much for being here and taking the time to be a part of this important conversation.

So, as you well know, within the first month of taking office President Biden issued a memorandum that directed various parts of the US government responsible for foreign policy, such as USAID, to prioritize efforts to advance LGBTQI+ rights around the world. How are those efforts going? And what have been the biggest challenges?

SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much. And thanks to everybody for turning out. It’s a great energy in the room, great energy this month, and much needed, because we harness this energy to try to do this work in the world.

Well, first to say that USAID is one of fifteen agencies that is being responsive to President Biden’s direction to promote and protect and respect the human rights of LGBTQIA+ people around the world. And I’d say I feel very fortunate every day, no matter what issue I’m working on, to be at USAID, because we have this toolkit. We have programming in public health on maternal and child health. Of course we have PEPFAR, where we work with the State Department and CDC, which has, of course, made a major difference, saving twenty-five million lives and 5.5 million babies is the estimate for the good that it has done over time. And that’s had a particular effect on LGBTQIA+ communities around the world.

But beyond that, we do agriculture. We do economic growth and inclusion, livelihoods work. We’ve helped vaccinate the world. In many parts of the world, if you are LGBTQIA+, coming forward to seek social services may risk something near and dear to you, depending on the legal environment in which you’re working.

When the fallout from COVID occurred and you saw such economic devastation around the world, given the fact that LGBTQIA+ people are often working in the informal sector and may have had, in some instances, less backup, the kinds of crises that have befallen the planet have a disparate impact on marginalized communities and those that have, in a sense, faced preexisting conditions, you might say, including discrimination, stigmatization, violence, et cetera.

So we went forth. We have tripled the size of our staff. We have the great Jay Gilliam, who many of you work with, as our lead LGBTQIA+ coordinator at USAID. That position had been unfilled in the previous administration. This fiscal year we’ve had a dedicated pool of resources of around sixteen million dollars, which does everything from spot emergency assistance to people who need legal defense because they’re being rounded up in some cases or evicted to working really closely with the State Department to help identify people who would be eligible for asylum or to become refugees because of their vulnerability, because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

So, you know, I’d say you see a massive surge in programming, in attention. But for me, I think the—and the thing that Jay has helped us so much with and the team, if you believe in development in 2023—I mean, and actually seeing development outcomes that matter and reversing development setbacks that have occurred—it’s not enough to have, like, a little pot of money, or a big pot of money, even, dedicated to LGBTQIA+. All the programming we do on food security, on education, on health, needs to be—and the list goes on—needs to be attentive and intentional about going out of our way to make sure that we are not just practicing development but inclusive development.

And the biggest challenges—I’m sure we’ll get into them, and I know many in the audience are seized with them—is criminalization, and even in countries that already have criminalized LGBTQIA+ status, you know, new moves, desire to render more salient laws that may be on the books but being ignored by some communities, work in places like Uganda, because of the introduction of the anti-homosexuality act, vigilantes and citizens and others taking what’s happening in the legal space or in the parliament and getting signed into law and viewing it as license to do whatever the hell they want to vulnerable people.

And so it’s not just happening in Uganda. That’s, of course, something that has happened very recently. But we see the instrumentalization of the human-rights agenda that so many in the world aspire to see progress, that being turned on its head. And in places where anti-democratic forces are ascendant or are getting either support or abetted or at least not counteracted by authorities, you see those voices getting louder. And even when there’s not a law and that kind of legal ballast behind those voices, that, in and of itself, is terrifying and exclusionary and a deterrent, again, for these communities to come forward and access these programs at the very time where we’re really seeking to make sure that we’re leaving no one behind.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: So since you brought up Uganda and also your point about, you know, USAID has all of these programs. But there are countries where just presenting yourself to make yourself—avail yourself of these programs could put you in danger. So the question is what is the United States government doing or can it do to push back on what’s happening in countries like Uganda?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, to start—and I would start with what I consider a statement of the obvious but, nonetheless, I think does need to be said because it’s not always the way things are done, which is you start from the proposition of nothing about you without you. This question of tactics and how to prevail or how to counteract are super complicated, right.

Imagine, like, being part of the Biden administration and the tactical questions about how we moved the Inflation Reduction Act and, you know, convinced Joe Manchin to be part of the—I mean, when we’re operating in someone else’s country, you know, understanding, you know, the complex ecosystem in which we work, drawing, I should say, at USAID very heavily on the expertise of our local staff, two-thirds of—at least-two thirds of USAID staff abroad are nationals of the countries in which we work so they can be a great resource, but fundamentally it is the communities that are going to be affected by these laws that provide cues to us on how vocal to be, how much to signal in a deterrent way in advance of the movement of a piece of legislation, which risks then putting the United States at the center of a national drama and potentially triggering nationalism and other forces or some, you know, historical, you know, dynamics—let’s put it that way.

And so—but even what I’ve just said is kind of simplistic because there is no one view. I mean, even within an organization people are debating at fever pitch, you know, what the right approach is. This is just really, really hard.

But we do come in with humility and really try to be in lockstep with the groups who we may have funded in the past or may be funding currently, and in the case of the anti-homosexuality act in—that Uganda has moved forward with President Biden was very clear that the law should be repealed. Came out with a public statement. Has talked—and this is one of the approaches that we have taken not only in Uganda but in other places that are threatening to put in place similar laws—talking about the effects, Jonathan, on this incredibly successful partnership that we’ve had in combating HIV/AIDS.

There’s one report in Uganda that shows that service utilization is down by more than 60 percent since the law was introduced and that’s people who are afraid of coming forward for vital health services because they’re afraid it could lead to their arrest or it could lead to their eviction or it could lead to vigilante violence.

And so here we are, you know, trying to get this epidemic under control by 2030 and we’re part of this grand global coalition and at the same time these steps are being taken that would set back not only the health of LGBTQI+ communities but the health in this instance of all Ugandans.

And so, in a sense, you know, really looking at what the practical effects are of being seen to license community involvement in discrimination, stigmatization, and even law enforcement as you see citizens, again, taking things into their own hands but trying to find also arguments that have broad appeal in terms of services or programs that a broad swath of the societies in which we work are enthusiastic about, you know, showing the link between those—for example, private sector investment. There’s not one country in which USAID works that isn’t interested in fueling economic growth recovering from COVID, getting young people to work.

Well, what does it mean if the multinational companies that we and the Commerce Department and the State Department have been working with to try to encourage them to invest in these countries? Their own anti-discrimination policies and values are not going to make that an attractive place for investment.

So it’s a combination of, you know, the State Department taking steps now potentially to sanction individuals involved in this measure in Uganda. That’s been something that’s been messaged publicly and, again, these sort of practical effects that are going to extend practical harms, that are going to extend beyond if this law is not repealed.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And so let’s talk about another country. I was thinking when you say, in response to my question about Uganda, talking to the groups on the ground, getting their input into what USAID and what the US government should do, let’s talk about Ukraine. There’s a war going on, but hopefully at some point that war will end and reconstruction will begin. Where does the LGBTQI+ community play—come into the conversation about rebuilding? Both from making sure that they are whole in Ukrainian society, but also that their rights are protected and respected?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, this is a complex issue and a complex question, and I could come at it a few different ways. But, first, let me just say that, you know, part of Putin’s motivation, as we well know, for invading Ukraine was watching Ukrainian society, the Ukrainian government, move at really rapid pace to integrate itself into Europe. And, yes, that carries with it a lot of economic benefit for young people in Ukraine, but much of the impetus behind what was, you know, between really 2013 and last year, such a shift, right, in an orientation that went in one direction and then shifted in another direction. Much of it was values-based.

That doesn’t mean everybody was with all aspects of the European agenda, or the European program, or the European Convention on Human Rights immediately. We’ve seen that, of course. But, you know, part of what Ukraine is fighting for and part of what Russia is trying to squelch is liberalization, is broad understanding of who human rights protections apply to. Now, again, that’s a kind of general statement.

What we do—then, shall I say, of course, following Russia’s invasion Ukraine’s work to liberalize and build checks and balances and build in human rights protections, although not making headlines in the American or even the European headline, that work has accelerated. Which is, frankly, remarkable that a country that’s fighting for its life and its people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But meaning, you know, you see [LGBTQI+] protections progressing not only through legislative measures, and regulation, and as we vet—as the Ukrainians vet and we support programs to vet judges, you know, their human rights credentials being assessed in this much more comprehensive way.

But also, again, as the economy—parts of the economy actually flourish—I know this is hard to believe. But, like, the tech sector grew by, I think, seven or eight percent last year. You know, that itself, young people being out and being integrated in the world, there’s just things happening in the society that I think is going to put Ukraine, you know, and above all [LGBTQI+] communities and individuals, in a much more supportive legal and social ecosystem as the whole rationale for the war is about integrating into Europe. And the criteria by which—that Ukraine is going to need to meet, the roadmap and so forth, is going to entail much stronger protections than have existed in the past.

To your point, I think, if I understood it, about reconstruction, again, that’s incumbent on this intentionality that I was talking about. USAID is a critical partner. I was just meeting with the minister of finance yesterday talking about reconstruction out of the recent conference in the United Kingdom. You know, as we think about procurement and nondiscrimination in procurement, you know, how are those checks and those protections built in? As we think right now about health services and making sure that those are restored every place we can, even places close to the front line or as territory is liberated, how does USAID support flow in a manner where we are constantly vigilant to how inclusive those services are, and whether or not they are provided?

I mean, you know, we’ve actually managed to distribute I think it’s something like sixteen million antiretrovirals in Ukraine, you know, just since the war, you know, has started. So, you know, in terms of the mainstream PEPFAR and HIV/AIDS programs, like, those have continued. We’ve managed to be able to keep those afloat. And that took real intentionality on the part of our health team and our Ukraine team.

But I think, again, the principle that we want to bring to everything we do in terms of inclusive development is just that it’s a design feature of any program that we do that we are looking to make sure we are going out of our way, just as we would for religious minorities and on behalf of religious freedom or for women in countries where women are discriminated against, to make sure that we are reaching the full spectrum of beneficiaries, and that any kind of social deterrent or normative factors are ones that we try to circumvent to make sure that we are being inclusive because that’s going to be in the interests of all—again, all individuals living in a country economically and in terms of their ability to—in this instance, to integrate into Europe.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: So what would you—what do you say to people who question why supporting LGBTQI+ rights should be a part of American foreign policy? Because you could see there might be some people around the world, or even in our own country, who think, you know, I’m down with the community, but why make that part of our foreign policy.

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, I think one way to take that question, which we do hear a lot and you might even say increasingly in certain quarters, but—is to imagine the counterfactual. You know, imagine a world in which US taxpayer resources are expended in a manner that, you know, in a sense perpetuates or deepens exclusion of individuals who are really vulnerable. I mean, that would be bad. And not only that, it would have the flavor, I think, in many of the countries we work, for a country that for all of our imperfections has long stood for human rights, it would have—it would have the effect, I believe, of being seen to kind of legitimate some of the rhetoric and actions and legal measures that are being put forward.

So, you know, there’s not, like, some place of neutrality here, right? We are the United States. We, you know, for many, many years in a very bipartisan way have stood for human rights. We have stood behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which doesn’t have exceptions or footnotes excluding particular communities. We stand for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, which explicitly say that no person should be left behind—again, without footnotes or caveats. So I think there are really hard questions about tactics, about in some places how vocal to be to not, again, put ourselves at the center of a narrative, because that in some sense is just what people who would seek to repress or terrorize vulnerable communities would like to see happen. So, again, it’s very, very difficult on the ground to find the right balance of tools.

You know, if you look at the Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda, the—you know, we spoke out with thirty-one countries. We spoke out with the United Nations independent expert that US diplomacy, when I was the UN as ambassador, was absolutely critical in securing the creation of that position. And the fact that that position has been renewed three times now, including most recently last year, speaks to, again, changing norms. The fact that international instruments more and more are including—sometimes explicitly, sometimes less so—[LGBTQI+] rights as human rights, the fact that we see same-sex marriage legalized this last year in Estonia and Slovenia, but also decriminalization in places as varied as Barbados and Singapore means that these principles are getting traction.

And these international instruments—and this is a critical part of President Biden’s agenda—are really important, Jonathan, because it gives citizens in a country, you know, where on the books there’s lots of happy talk about human rights, but it gives [LGBTQI+] organizations and individuals, you know, something to hang their arguments on; something to say, look, but the United Nations Human Rights Council just appointed this individual, this individual says this. And so when we can act in company, in a coalition, I think that’s always advantageous, and that is something we seek to do.

When the norms themselves—I was part of getting the Security Council for the first time in what at that time was the seventy-five-year history of the UN to condemn the targeting of individuals on their—on the basis of their sexual orientation—that had never happened before—and hearing from around the world what it meant for the United Nations Security Council to have done that. I mean, this was something that was a consensus document; you know, the Russian Federation, a number of African governments that had laws that were not respectful of these human rights on the books went along with that.

And so, again, thinking tactically about how to do it and how these norms become more salient in international law, I think, is very important. But it is in our interest to have maximum economic inclusion that’s consistent with our economic objectives as a country and our foreign-policy interests. It is in our interest to fight repression against whomever it is being carried out. And it is in our foreign-policy interest to stand up for our values.

President Biden’s polling, I think, reflects broad approval, surging poll numbers; I think a tripling in global polls about—when the question is posed, do you think Joe Biden will do the right thing, a tripling from his predecessor. And if you talk to people around the world and sort of get a sense of why, the fact that human rights are so central to President Biden’s argument and democracy and the importance of democracy delivering, that’s a major distinguishing feature not only of this administration but really of US foreign policy from some of the big geopolitical actors who are more and more active.

So if we go quiet, just in the same way that if we were to go quiet on the rights of Christians in societies in which they are being persecuted, and just defer to prevailing, you know, what is taken as prevailing popular sentiment, I think we would really shortchange what is distinguishing about American foreign policy.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: One more question from me before we open it up to Q&A, and that’s this. Everything you say is, you know, terrific and wonderful in terms of what the administration is doing, American values. But I just wonder, when you travel around the world or talk to your counterparts, particularly those in, say, Uganda and elsewhere, how do you respond to what they might say, such as, you know, well, your own country’s, you know, no—you know, no garden party. You’ve got book bans and drag-queen story hours being banned and don’t-say-gay laws. And we’re awaiting a Supreme Court decision, possibly tomorrow, definitely by Friday, on whether a cake decorator can say, no, I’m not going to decorate your cake because your same-sex marriage, you know, goes against my beliefs.

How do you deal with that when that is thrown back in your face from foreign leaders?

SAMANTHA POWER: You know, we have a policy that Jay has helped shepherd through USAID which will be the first-of-its-kind LGBTQIA+ policy that’ll be out soon. And one of its many, I think, important features is it speaks of the importance of going forth in a spirit of humility and ally-ship. And I’ve already spoken, I think, a little bit about the ally-ship point.

But in general—you know, you didn’t mention the insurrection. You know, like—

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, I mean, it wasn’t—

SAMANTHA POWER: There’s plenty—there’s—

JONATHAN CAPEHART: It wasn’t an LGBTQIA+ insurrection. So I figured I’d just leave—

SAMANTHA POWER: No, that’s a good point.

JONATHAN CAPEHART:—leave that out. But go on.

SAMANTHA POWER: No, but what I mean is in general we are standing up for democracy and human rights as we are facing domestically very, very significant challenges. And I’ve broadened the aperture a little bit from your question, though your question is very valid, you know, as focused on our discussion, our topic for today.

But I don’t even think we can think about LGBTQIA+ rights outside of the broader context of the anti-democratic movements that exist all over the world, including—you know, which include not recognizing results of elections, including resorting to violence, including, you know, some cases partnering with, you know, outside repressive actors who would seek to widen divisions within democracies.

So, you know, the statistics, it’s—you know, I think it’s sixteen years of freedom in decline around the world. And what we see is attacks on minorities generally—sometimes religious minorities; sometimes LGBTQI+ communities—are often the canary in the coal mine about a broader set of measures and a broader kind of consolidation of power away from the people and in the center. And certainly, a diminishment of checks and balances. I think that’s the abiding feature. And minority rights and the rights of marginalized communities fundamentally are checks on majoritarianism in our country and globally.

So, you know, I think if you go—and I’m not saying that we don’t have, you know, as you put it, kind of thrown back at us things that are happening in this country. But I think really since President Obama, and very much carried through with President Biden, we tend to kind of preempt that moment by situating the dialogue about [LGBTQI+] rights in our own struggles, and not leaving the elephant in the room, you know, over here. But to say, look, we’re—this is—we’re in the midst of, you know, many of these same challenges. There are forces in our countries—in our country that would also wish to go back to what is remembered as a simpler time.

And, you know, often I think that actually sets the stage for a more productive conversation, because it’s not a finger-wagging—you know, you may condemn something that has happened and use the leverage of the United States to demand, you know, a repeal. But it is not from a glass house that we are having conversations like this. And I was just in Africa, and I’ll be traveling again. I mean, the dialogue that we have is a humble dialogue. But it is one that has a North Star that I think can animate us both and that is rooted, fundamentally, not only in American values, at their core, but in international instruments and in universal values.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And so we’re going to open it up to questions. There is a microphone, oh, I thought it was on a stand. It’s an actual person. Thank you. Thank you very much. We’re going to go until about—if I can find my thing—until about quarter to four. So the microphone is there. Short questions, so we can get more answers in. Go ahead.

Q: Hi, Administrator Power. My name is Ryan Arick. I’m an assistant director here at the Atlantic Council. I’m really thrilled to have you here today.

I wanted to ask a question related to US development assistance to Ukraine, and specifically how we’re looking at the LGBTQI+ angle as far as our assistance during the ongoing war. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thank you.

SAMANTHA POWER: You want to go one by one, or?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Yeah.

SAMANTHA POWER: OK.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Quickly.

SAMANTHA POWER: OK. So in brief, one of the things you’ll see, again, in the forthcoming policy, is a broad emphasis on thinking within USAID and within our humanitarian emergency programing about inclusion and about proactive outreach and services. I think there’s been—we’ve always, of course, been for an inclusive process to find and to serve beneficiaries. But to think—you know, to think that all beneficiaries will come forward equally in all communities is not accurate. And so, you know, how this plays out in any specific crisis area, you know, that’s going to be fundamentally up to our engagement with our implementing partners, like the World Food Program, like the ICRC and others. But there is a broad embrace of inclusive response and a broad recognition that gravity alone is not going to get you there.

Again, we’re quite far along in Ukraine because I think the government has every incentive—you know, not saying that there isn’t discrimination that occurs in Ukraine, or that some of those fears don’t still exist. But there are a lot of incentives pulling policy and enforcement in a constructive direction, given the European journey that they are very committed to. But imagine, you know, in other parts of the world where there isn’t that, you know, legal framework or that political will at high levels and so that’s why crisis is going to be very important.

The other thing I’d say is, of course, just continuing our HIV/AIDS work full speed ahead, any work we do in human rights, thinking—so, again, there’s the dedicated LGBTQI+ work and then there’s making sure that all of our programming in these other areas is inclusive of that.

So just—and, finally, just we’ve done a lot with hotlines. There’s so much trauma, so much need for psychosocial service and care. We work very closely with Mrs. Zelensky as well, who has really pushed mental health and so forth. So you will see both in our development programming and in our emergency humanitarian programming, provided the resources are there, which we have to work with Congress to continue to mobilize, but a very significant allocation as well to recognizing the trauma and then the unique traumas that may apply to different communities, including this one.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. We’ve got six questions, ten minutes. So what I want to really try to do is two questions at a time. And, Madam Administrator, if you could—a little more brief—to the first two, ask the questions and then we’ll have the administrator answer. Quick questions.

Q: Hi, Administrator Power. My name is Katie. I’m a graduate student at Johns Hopkins SAIS right in Dupont Circle.

And my question for you kind of revolves around the other countries we haven’t talked about. We’ve talked a lot about Ukraine, Uganda. But what should the USAID and other people in the United States what other countries should we focus on for human rights violations, especially in the community?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. Great.

I’m going to get one more.

Q: Hi, Administrator. My name is Divya. I’m an undergraduate at Stanford University and I’m currently an intern at the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency.

My question for you is how and if you have handled and talked about tech governance in regards to LGBTQI+ rights and misinformation, perhaps, regarding HIV/AIDS, vaccines, and more.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. Two simple questions—in nine minutes. I’m going to—I’m keeping us on time.

SAMANTHA POWER: So on the first question, I would say that there is a spate now of laws, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa but not only, that are at various stages of legislative movement. Let’s put it that way.

Now, what focus entails, again, you know, I think filtering it through what do our partners on the ground think would be most advantageous for any particular individual or entity or institution to do, as we’ve discussed, it’s—you know, figuring that out is no easy proposition. But I think the New York Times recently did a study that did a lay down of how many country—what stage of passage, you know, these laws were.

I mean, it’s kind of—it’s kicked up what’s happened in Uganda and even our response to it has kicked up, you know, more vocal leadership to push through further exacerbating criminalization measures as, by the way, have really important positive decisions that have been made in Africa.

That, in turn, has generated a backlash and we’ve seen something very similar here, of course, over many, many decades where anti-discrimination ordinances, for example, in Florida—you know, I mean, decades ago—then kicked off major—you know, very, very pronounced counter reactions, massive fundraising, et cetera. That’s happening, too, where for a step forward it then, you know, ignites, you know, certain forces and antibodies and then you see, you know, proactive moves that really can set back those rights.

So, again, the tactics I think we’d have to be very, very case specific. But, you know, where I would—especially for those of you who are in civil society or not in the government per se, the actual support for the organizations. And you’ll have the chance, as well, in this country—those of you who are active in the LGBTQI+ community—through the Welcome Corps at the State Department—this is—I’m sorry I’m going on, but this is a very exciting development that we will actually have the chance—in addition to processing people who are being persecuted on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity, we will have the chance as community members to welcome these individuals. Now, that infrastructure is being built and it’s not, you know—you know, yet where there’s a number for you to call, but all of us will have a—well, there’s a number to call for Welcome Corps, but I’m saying very specifically—

SAMANTHA POWER: For—from this—OK. I was told that we were—we were still some weeks away from that. Well, what is the number that people should call, then, if they want—

AUDIENCE MEMBER: There’s a link on—

SAMANTHA POWER: What is the link?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: RainbowRailroad.org.

SAMANTHA POWER: OK. That’s the State Department program?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No.

SAMANTHA POWER: No, no, no, OK. So I’m—sorry, I was talking—

AUDIENCE MEMBER:—to Welcome Corps.

SAMANTHA POWER: OK, great. OK. So RainbowRailroad.org will refer you. I think the State Department piece we are still moving out to make sure that these partnerships can be ignited in rapid fire.

And then the second question, Jonathan, was?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I wrote in my notes tech governance.

SAMANTHA POWER: Tech governance.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Yes.

SAMANTHA POWER: Yes is the short answer. I’ve engaged them—

JONATHAN CAPEHART: We have—we have five minutes and five questions to go.

SAMANTHA POWER: Yes. I have—I have engaged them on disinformation generally, and this is a very important subcomponent. Discrimination isn’t new. Persecution isn’t new. The amount of disinformation, including deepfakes showing President Biden vilifying LGBTQI+—I mean, you know, these things are really exacerbating an already very challenging situation.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. And so we have one, two, three, four, five questions, five minutes. Lord Jesus. All right.

Here’s what I want to do. I want you each to ask your very brief question so your question at least gets articulated, and then Administrator Power will answer. Real quickly.

SAMANTHA POWER: All five.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: All five. All five. Because now we have four minutes.

Q: Thank you very much.

Very quickly, what would you say to other countries that stand on principle of noninterference, we don’t get to tell other governments how to treat their people? Very briefly. Thank you.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. Thank you.

Q: Yes. My name is Bishop Joseph Tolton.

Domestically in our country, White supremacy one can argue is cradled by the far religious right in our country. These actors are also responsible for the racialization of homophobia across Africa. Are there whole-of-government conversations about how to hold these actors accountable for their racialized efforts?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Great question.

Q: Hi. David Stacy, Human Rights Campaign.

As you know, nondiscrimination is a touchstone of equality, and the administration right now is reviewing the requirements for grantees and cooperative agreements and across the foreign assistance agencies. Can you speak to the need to do that and USAID’s role in helping the other agencies do something where we’re applying it across the board with all of the agencies on an equal basis?

Q: Hi. Mark Bromley with Council for Global Equality.

You spoke about the value of both dedicated LGBTQI+ funding and integrated funding, and we’re excited that that fifteen million is increased to twenty-five million this year. But on the integration point, how are you thinking about measuring integration for LGBTQI+ persons, particularly in places where, you know, being [LGBTQI+] may be criminalized, it’s difficult/dangerous to measure? How do we make sure that’s more than lip service and that that integration is really happening? Because that is where the true value lies.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: OK. Last question.

Q: Hi there. My name is Bryce Dawson from Counterpart International.

You mentioned the difficulties of minimizing intrusion and tactically advocating for LGBTQI+ rights in other nations, as well as mentioned potential procurement policies to ensure [LGBTQI+] protections. Do you have any in the pipeline that you’re working on or anything in the future?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I want to thank everyone for their—for their questions, all five of you or seven altogether. Madam Administrator, you have two minutes.

SAMANTHA POWER: Thirty seconds.

Well, you know, I think that in general we—in our engagements on human rights issues, we hear a lot about noninterference. I mean, there’s no question. I heard about it a lot at the UN. We hear it often from, you know, countries like the Russian Federation that have invaded another country and tried to take over the other country. We hear it from countries that are providing surveillance technology, you know, to other countries, or fueling disinformation in the countries in which we are working.

So, you know, it is a shield. It is an important one to take seriously, because we also, of course, respect sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and so forth. So USAID is active across sectors and involved in these countries. And this agenda, I think, is—and, by that, it’s the human rights agenda more broadly—is central to how we believe as well that we will get the most out of the programs that we are doing across sectors.

And that brings me—and that’s the kind of conversation we have. Is, like, I was using Uganda as an example about making sure that we are also making the pragmatic case for people who are very skeptical because, again, they—there is a kind of seamlessness to the way our work across governance and human rights in citizen security and in the broad sweep of development sectors—from agriculture, to education, to health, et cetera—they do come together in service of development objectives. And that’s what the SDG’s also enshrine.

And then I’m not going to be able to do justice to the other questions in full, beyond I think the point about measuring integration is very important. You know, for those who are not making their identity known to us, that’s not going to be something that, you know, we will be able to measure in that sense. But I think these are the kinds of things that we are working through, through this policy, to make sure that this isn’t just, yes, here’s our standalone programming, and then by everything else we do, you know, operates in the way that we’ve always done it.

And so it’s not going to be, you know, instant, where everything is happening all at once. But all of our missions have to have inclusive development advisors or somebody—and this will be evident out of the policy—but somebody who is a focal point for working on LGBTQI+ rights and programming. So we’re hopeful that that, plus our new office of chief economist, will help us develop a kind of methodology that will be responsive to this concern that somehow it’s going to be invisible and not done, which is certainly our objective is for it to be done and, when appropriate, visible. And certainly, at least visible to us so we know whether we’re achieving what we’re setting out to achieve.

And then, lastly, I would just say, because it’s coming, the point about nondiscrimination among beneficiaries is just really important. And that guidance will be forthcoming, we hope, soon.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Do you have any thoughts on the other question about—I wrote it down real fast, but I know I got it wrong—about the racialized religious efforts on LGBTQI+ rights that have been happening?

SAMANTHA POWER: Well, I guess all I would say on that—because there are others in our government, I think, who are working on the kind of conversation that was asked about—is just this is another part of the response to the noninterference charge, is—that we do hear from people who don’t want to be engaged on human rights issues. And that is that there are a lot of actors from outside who are very active actually in pushing certain forms of legislation that would have these discriminatory, and these exclusionary, and these dangerous effects. And so, again, the noninterference claim is usually made in a selective way.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And with that, and just two minutes overtime, Samantha Power, nineteenth administrator of USAID. Thank you very, very much for being here.

SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you.

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One of the most glaring examples of governments’ poor performance is the egregiously low number of victims governments identify—a problem I routinely faced over the last two decades working on this issue as a federal prosecutor, nongovernmental organization leader, and US ambassador. The United Nations (UN) Protocol to Combat Trafficking in Persons is one of the most widely subscribed instruments of international law, under which governments commit to identifying the people whom traffickers exploit. According to the latest TIP report, however, governments around the world reported identifying only 115,324 human trafficking victims in the last year. This number comes from data governments provide to the US State Department about the number of victims whom law enforcement or nongovernmental organizations identify and who receive protection services. Although this number is higher than last year’s number, it is slightly lower than the high of 118,932 victims identified in 2019.

Meanwhile, the estimated number of human trafficking victims is increasing. Compare the number of victims that governments reported identifying with the UN estimate based on surveys and data modeling. The UN estimates that traffickers are compelling 27.6 million people into forced labor or sex trafficking.

If 27.6 million victims exist and governments are only identifying 115,324 victims, then the world only identifies less than half of 1 percent of the estimated victims (0.4 percent). This means that 99.6 percent of victims remain trapped by their traffickers, unable to decide where they work or who touches their bodies.

Sex trafficking dominates the discussion of governments’ lackluster victim identification efforts. Forced labor has received less attention, but in this year’s TIP report governments identified a higher number of forced labor victims than in any prior year: 24,340. This improvement, along with governments prosecuting the largest number of labor traffickers, is encouraging. However, when the victim identification statistics are isolated for just forced labor, governments are only identifying 0.1 percent of the total estimated forced labor victims.

Victim identification is made even more difficult due to state-sanctioned human trafficking. The TIP report found that in eleven countries, the governments themselves trafficked people. These offenders include Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, and China, where millions of Uyghurs are forced to work in Xinjiang reeducation camps. It is especially odious when the government charged with identifying victims is, in fact, the perpetrator.

Without effective victim identification, governments cannot hold traffickers accountable, and people of goodwill cannot offer tailored, trauma-informed services to trafficking survivors. Society cannot address what it cannot identify. Victim identification is the prerequisite to successful prosecution and prevention of this crime. Yet, governments’ rate of victim identification is appallingly low.

It is time for governments to match their rhetoric with their resources and dramatically increase funding for prevention efforts, investigators, prosecutors, service providers, and trauma-informed care. Specialized investigative units should no longer be paper tigers. Survivor leadership should no longer be an ornamental add-on. Holding companies and individuals accountable for committing human trafficking crimes should no longer be elective. Human trafficking victims should no longer be prosecuted for the unlawful acts their traffickers compel them to commit.

Improvement and success must begin with increased victim identification. There are several practical steps that concerned citizens should ask their governments to take:

• Mandate that educators and health care providers become mandatory reporters.
• Invest in specialized investigative units and prosecutors focused on stopping traffickers. 
• Create pathways for survivors to rid themselves of criminal records caused by their traffickers. 
• Ensure companies are not using forced laborers to produce solar panels, electric vehicles, apparel, tomatoes, and batteries. 
• Fund trauma-informed services for survivors. 
• Elevate and center survivors in the fight to put traffickers out of business.

Traffickers thrive in an ecosystem where mere intentions and underfunded public justice systems are their only challenges. It is time for leaders to arise and become champions for freedom. Millions of victims count on governments, civil society, and faith communities to do more than merely care about their plight, designate awareness days, and think good thoughts. Survivors need the world to accelerate its strategic investment and meaningful action to increase victim identification.

John Cotton Richmond is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, chief impact officer at Atlas Free, president of the Libertas Council, and former US ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons.

The post Less than half of 1 percent of human trafficking victims are identified. That needs to change. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In line with other surveys of public opinion in wartime Ukraine, the KIIS poll identified strikingly similar attitudes across the country, with 75% of respondents in eastern Ukraine ruling out any territorial concessions compared to 84% in central Ukraine and 86% in both the south and west. This illustrates the unifying impact the Russian invasion has had on Ukrainian public opinion, and underlines the significance of the ongoing war as a major milestone in modern Ukraine’s nation-building journey.

Until very recently, international media coverage of Ukraine often depicted the country as deeply divided between pro-Russian east and pro-European west. This was always an oversimplification and is now clearly no longer the case. Instead, attitudes toward key issues such as the war with Russia and membership of NATO have converged, with strong support for Euro-Atlantic integration evident in every region of Ukraine. Meanwhile, pro-Russian sentiment has plummeted to record lows, especially in the predominantly Russian-speaking regions of southern and eastern Ukraine that have witnessed the worst of the fighting.

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This latest poll is an important data point that confirms Ukrainian resolve to achieve the complete de-occupation of the country. It also highlights the problems of viewing the current counteroffensive as a make-or-break moment in Ukraine’s war effort.

Some commentators have argued that failure to achieve a major military breakthrough in the coming months would cause a sharp decline in international support for Ukraine and force Kyiv to accept the necessity of some kind of compromise with the Kremlin. In reality, however, the Ukrainian public is staunchly opposed to the kind of land-for-peace deal that would likely form the basis of any negotiated settlement. As long as Ukrainians remain determined to fight on, few Western leaders will be prepared to abandon them.  

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to have a good grasp of the public mood in wartime Ukraine. He has consistently stated that Ukraine’s goal is the liberation of all regions currently under Russian occupation. This uncompromising position has attracted some international criticism, with China pushing for the resumption of peace talks and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urging Ukraine in April to cede Crimea to Russia in order to end the war.

Ukraine’s Western partners have been far more supportive, providing growing quantities of vital military aid while emphasizing that it is up to Kyiv alone to define what would constitute an acceptable peace. Following some initial hesitation, most Western leaders now also recognize the need for Russia’s invasion to end in a decisive defeat, and acknowledge that anything less would have disastrous consequences for international security.

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It is easy to understand why so many Ukrainians reject the idea of striking a deal with Moscow, despite the terrible toll of the war and the inevitability of further trauma.

Perhaps more than anything else, this determination to liberate the whole of Ukraine reflects an acute awareness of the genocidal agenda underpinning Russia’s invasion and the horrors taking place in Russian-occupied regions. Every time the Ukrainian army advances and liberates territory, officials uncover the same grim evidence of war crimes including summary executions, torture, abductions, sexual violence, and mass deportations. For the vast majority of Ukrainians, the idea of condemning millions of their compatriots to this fate is simply unthinkable.

Many in Ukraine are also convinced that attempts to strike a bargain with the Kremlin are both futile and dangerous. Opponents of a compromise settlement note that the current war is no mere border dispute requiring minor territorial concessions, and point to Russia’s increasingly undisguised commitment to extinguishing Ukrainian statehood. They warn that Russian leaders would view any negotiated peace deal as a pause in hostilities, which they would then use to regroup before launching the next stage of the invasion.

Based on Russia’s own actions over the past sixteen months of full-scale war, it is difficult to see how any kind of compromise would prove workable. Putin himself has openly compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great, and in September 2022 announced the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions representing around 20% of the entire country. If he is not decisively defeated on the battlefield, he will almost certainly seek to go further and attempt to seize more Ukrainian land.

A further factor fueling Ukraine’s commitment to complete de-occupation is the strong desire to free the country once and for all from the historic threat of Russian imperialism. This reflects widespread Ukrainian perceptions of the current war as the latest episode in what is actually a far longer history of imperial aggression that stretches back many hundreds of years.

For centuries, Russian imperial influence has shaped Ukrainian history in ways that have caused untold suffering to generations of Ukrainians while keeping the country trapped in a state of arrested development. Unless Russia is defeated and forced to withdraw entirely from Ukrainian land, this bitter cycle will continue. Ukrainians are under no illusions regarding the high price of victory, but most feel that the price of a premature peace would be far higher, and refuse to pass this burden on to their children and grandchildren. Anyone seeking to end the war without Russian defeat must first reckon with this resolve.     

Peter Dickinson is the editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service. 

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 11, 2023

Ukraine’s counteroffensive will likely create new reintegration challenges

By Lesia Dubenko

If Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is successful, Kyiv will be faced with the significant challenge of reintegrating communities that have lived under Russian occupation for extended periods, writes Lesia Dubenko.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jun 7, 2023

Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive will aim to keep the Russians guessing

By Peter Dickinson

Speculation is mounting that Ukraine’s hotly anticipated summer counteroffensive may be underway but initial stages are likely to feature probes and diversionary attacks rather than a big push, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Drones

UkraineAlert Jun 6, 2023

Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is a key moment but long-term resolve remains crucial

By Tennyson Dearing

Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive is an important moment in the war with Russia but it is critical to maintain a sense of perspective and underline the need for long-term Western backing, writes Tennyson Dearing.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Beyond the counteroffensive: 84% of Ukrainians are ready for a long war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

360/OS

Jun 7, 2023

Activists and experts assemble in Costa Rica to protect human rights in the digital age

By Digital Forensic Research Lab

Our Digital Forensic Research Lab is convening top tech thinkers and human-rights defenders at RightsCon to collaborate on an agenda for advancing rights globally.

Cybersecurity Disinformation

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speakers

Tracy Chou
Chief Executive Officer, Block Party

Julie Inman Grant
eSafety Commissioner, Australian Government

Neema Lugangira
Member of Parliament, Tanzania

Fernanda Martins
Director, Internet Lab

Moira Whelan
Director, Democracy and Technology, National Democratic Institute

MOIRA WHELAN: Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining us [for] a conversation about women’s political participation and the consequences of harassment. And before we get started today and I introduce our fantastic panelists, I just wanted to express my thanks to Access Now but especially also to DFRLab, who is cosponsoring this panel in particular. And what we’re going to do today is we’re going to walk through a short introduction, I’ll open the conversation to our participants, and then we’re happy to take your questions online.

So just to get us started, I first wanted to acknowledge that this panel is really a representation of a lot of the incredible work that’s been going on in our community for a really long time. And I would point to organizations that we’ve worked with such as DanishChurchAid, Internews, Policy, and many, many others. Here at RightsCon, there are more than thirty sessions happening to address these issues of online violence against women in politics.

And you know, so first acknowledging that others are doing the work. And then, saying that, some of the organizations that we work with—and I think an expectation we now have—is that if we’re doing this work, we face that harassment and that abuse as a community and as an organization, and that goes along with including the organizations that have helped organize this panel.

So first I want to say a little bit about NDI and how we came to this work. NDI is a democracy organization that trains women around the world to help them run for office, help them prepare for their life in civil society and the public sphere. And this issue has become blinking red for us. The number of women who are self-censoring, who are pulling out of politics, who are deciding another path is probably the biggest threat to democracy that we face today.

So we really started down the path of using our traditional models of working on information—on the information space and bringing actors together to address this issue. But we also believe it’s a solvable problem and I want to note that part of what we’re talking about today and the reason we’ve talked about building the community we want to build with our guests is because we want to talk about solutions but also some of the setbacks.

So without further ado, our panelists are Julie Inman Grant, who is the eSafety commissioner of Australia; and also Tracy Chou, who is the founder of Block Party and also an entrepreneur and is—we’re really thrilled to have her; as well as Fernanda Martins, who is the director at Internet Lab; and, finally, Neema Lugangira, who is a member of parliament from Tanzania.

So welcome, all of you, and, Neema, I want to start with you. The thing that we have noticed in doing this work is that it’s very rare for active female politicians to speak up because you don’t want to make, to use your words, this is not the agenda, right. You have other issues as a parliamentarian you want to address.

So I wonder if you can walk us through your personal experience of being so outspoken on the harassment you face and also what that’s done for your political experience.

NEEMA LUGANGIRA: Thank you very much. I, first, want to sincerely thank yourself, Moira, and NDI Tech for facilitating and enabling me to be here at RightsCon. So thank you, once again.

As you rightly said, that being a female in politics, unfortunately, the more outspoken you are, the more popular you are and well known the more abuse you get, and oftentimes you find on social media platforms the abuse that we tend to get it’s a group of people who want to disqualify you, discredit you, belittle you.

So instead of focusing on the issue that you’re presenting, instead of focusing on their agenda, they shift the issue and start focusing on the gender and, unfortunately, being a female politician what they do is they sexualize the issue. So they will sexualize everything that you’ve presented. If it’s a photo they’ll sexualize that. If you happen to take a photo with a guy in a meeting they’ll probably change the backgrounds so just to shift the narrative and to kind of belittle you and kind of shut you up.

And what that has done is, unfortunately, in Africa—and I believe it’s probably the same even in the Global North—is that the number of women in politics or female members of parliament who are active online is very, very minimal.

For example, in Tanzania we have about 146 female MPs and probably less than 5 percent active on social media, using social media for their work, and what that does—what that does very quickly it has a huge detrimental effect because, one, it limits our own visibility and if you’re not visible as a politician it limits your own reelection.

But it also takes a step back. You know, organizations like NDI are making strides to increase the number of women in politics but young women, aspiring women, they see us women in politics who are supposedly in power but we are being abused and we’re helpless and nobody comes to the defense of women in politics.

Like, I’ve seen it over and over again when a female in politics is being abused nobody comes to their defense. Actually, more people mob attack. It’s almost it comes—it comes kind of with the territory.

And just to sum up, I decided that since we’re a group that nobody speaks for us so I’m going to speak for members of parliament. I’m going to speak for women in politics, and as a result of that, yes, it brings about more abuse but then some of us have to go through it so that we can address this issue because I want to see more women in politics visible so that we can strengthen their visibility because we are doing a lot of incredible work and it needs to be seen.

MOIRA WHELAN: I couldn’t agree with you more and I think, quickly, I want to shift to you, Julie, because, you know, there is that issue of full participation and it’s something you’ve really focused on at eSafety in Australia and getting to sort of moving us from the research that we’ve worked on to the solutions.

I wonder if you can walk everyone through here this sort of example of addressing some of the concerns that Neema has raised in Australia.

JULIE INMAN GRANT: [For those] who don’t know what an eSafety commissioner is, we’re the first national independent regulator for online harms and online safety. And we were established in 2015, and so there is an Online Safety Act that enables me to take action when Australians report all forms of abuse to social media platforms, gaming sites, dating sites, you name it, and it isn’t taken down. So we serve as that safety net to advocate on behalf of our citizens when things go wrong online. We know tons fall through the cracks. And so we can bridge that inherent power balance that exists.

So I deal with everything from child sexual exploitation to image-based abuse, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and videos. And I can say that recently we’ve been getting reports of deepfake videos of female politicians and other prominent women. We have a cyberbullying scheme for youth, and an adult cyber abuse scheme, which is at a much higher threshold to make sure that freedom of expression isn’t undermined. But we all realize here that targeted misogynistic abuse is designed to silence voices. And, as you say, women will self-censor.

Now, we—beyond these laws, we focus on prevention, in the first instance. Protection, through these regulatory schemes. And then what I call proactive change. So part of that has to do with putting responsibility back on the platforms themselves through initiatives like Safety by Design. You know, AI is a perfect use case as to how these—the collective brilliance of the technology industry should be used to tackling this at scale and preventing hateful, and misogynistic, and homophobic content from being shared.

So on the prevention side, well, first of all, I should say all of these forms of abuse are gendered. Ninety-six percent of the child sexual abuse material we look at—which happens, sorry to say, at toddler age—96 percent are of girls. Eighty-five percent of our image-based abuse are from women and girls. And then when you get more to the pointy end, we know that 99 percent of women experiencing domestic and family violence are also experiencing an extension of that, be it through technology-facilitated abuse, in 99.3 percent of cases.

So 89 percent of our adult cyber abuse cases are from women, and many of whom are either being cyber-stalked and doxed as [an] extension of domestic and family violence, or by perpetrators who specifically target women. And as Neema said, the way that online abuse against women manifests is different versus men. It’s sexualized. It’s violent. It talks about rape, fertility, supposed virtue, and appearance. It just manifests in very, very different ways. So I’ve had so many politicians say to me, you know, their male counterparts will say: Well, just toughen up, sweetheart, this is politics. Well, it is different.

So I actually tried to start a program called Women in the Spotlight to provide social media self-defense to women politicians, to journalists, to anyone in the public eye. And I was told by a previous government, we can’t fund that. That’s protecting privileged women. So I set up the program anyway, and started to do the training. And we can’t keep up with demand for social media self-defense training. And I don’t need to tell any of you that if being a woman receiving misogynistic abuse isn’t enough, if you’re from a—you have a disability, you end up—you identify as LGBTQI+, or you’re from a diverse background, that kind of abuse is compounded.

So again, I think we’ll continue to persevere. We need these prevention programs. We also know that the average professional woman in Australia is receiving online abuse. So one in three women. And 25 percent of them won’t take a job opportunity or a promotion if it requires them to be online. So we’re starting to see normalization of this kind of abuse across the population. And that’s why I’m trying to use my powers much more strongly to send a message that you cannot abuse people with total impunity. And this also involves penalties and fines for perpetrators, as well as the platforms themselves that refuse to remove content. We always try and work informally first, but I have used my formal powers. And if the platforms don’t comply, I can take them to court and to fine them as well.

MOIRA WHELAN: Well, and we are going to wing our way to Silicon Valley when we get to Tracy, but I wanted to stop in Brazil first and give Fernanda a chance. Because I think one of the things you said, Julie, was really about the intersectional issues as well that are linked to this. But also, the successes that you’ve had as civil society at Internet Lab, first having to prove to governments that this is a problem; second, getting them to pay attention and to work through the process. And I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your involvement working with the government of Brazil.

FERNANDA MARTINS: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Moira, for this question. And thank you, DFRLab, for organize it.

I think Internet Lab, we have been working to improve the way that political gender-based violence is treated by governments independent of the government at the moment. So at this moment also it’s different because we have a progressive government, but at the same time we have parliamentaries that is not defenders of human rights. So the context is our fragile democracy, yet so we have these challenge to understand how we can contribute to this issue in Brazil.

So at this moment we have the fake news bill to trying to address the problems related to platforms, but it is important to mention that in the bill don’t have any mention to gender, any mention to LGBTQAI+ community, and a brief note about the law, political violence law and racism law in Brazil. But it’s like we are running in parallel avenues. It’s not connected. So we are trying to talk to government, talk to private sector, and understand how we can mix different social sectors to address the problem. And I think we have the law approved in 2021 addressing political violence, but we started the enforcement of the law in the last election and it was really weak. We need to just expand more the comprehension and not focus only on banal answers. We need education and other things in this context.

MOIRA WHELAN: Well, and I think that’s really important, especially as Julie was talking about so much the value of implementation and needing to see that it’s not just legal frameworks that are going to get us there.

But all of you have talked about the platforms. All of you have talked about tech. And I want to turn to Tracy now because I do have to tell you a story. Tracy was with us when DFRLab hosted us in Brussels to really introduce this issue and to really put it on the center stage, literally. And we’re big fans of Block Party. But, Tracy, we have a different panel here today. So we were here celebrating the success of Block Party, but I think you should maybe tell us about the current status.

TRACY CHOU: Yes. So, hi, everyone. I’m Tracy. I’m the founder and CEO of Block Party. We build technology to fight harassment online and make the internet safe for everyone. Until last week, our flagship product was available on Twitter to combat harassment, and it is now sadly on hiatus thanks to platform changes.

Before we get to that, maybe some context. I started my career as an early engineer at social media companies that are now very big platforms—at Facebook, Pinterest, and Quora—so I kind of understand how platforms are built and what are their incentives not just at the high levels for the companies, but also for individual people working at those companies.

And separately, I became an activist for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry, seeing how the people that are in the room really matter for the product that we’re building. That led to me getting a lot of harassment, and so I set out to solve that problem blending together the different parts of my experience…

So what we built on top of Twitter was something to solve my own problem, essentially a sort of spam folder where you can choose who you want to hear from. Everything gets filtered into that folder that you don’t—you might not want to see. You can review it later and take action later, involve your community for help. And it works really well. Like, it was great for me.

Silicon Valley talks about “dogfooding” your own products, building things that you use yourself. And it was great for me to experience the mental health impact of not having to see all of that terrible stuff. It’s not just me. It’s a lot of other folks that we’ve already heard from on this panel, people who are working in politics, people who are activists, academics. It’s been really sad to see that we’ve had to shut down—or, hopefully just put in hiatus. We’re really hopeful that we can bring it back in some capacity in the future. We’re already seeing the outpouring of folks who are who are using our product on Twitter really sad to see it go. There are people who are tweeting every day now saying, like, I miss Block Party, literally every day, because I’m now getting all this harassment that is no longer filtered. So lots more to share on that. That is the current status.

MOIRA WHELAN: Well, Tracy, I’m not going to—I’m going to stay with you for a second, because you should know that here in this room, I have heard repeatedly people saying they miss Block Party. We wish you could be here with us so that you could feel it directly, but we’re sending it to you virtually, because we need products like this. And I think the other aspect of this story that we would love if you could—if you could share it, if you can channel your rage into helping this room help you. You’re an entrepreneur. You’ve been building.

And yet—and it should be very obvious to all of us the business case for creating safe spaces for all people to fully participate online. And yet, your experience in Silicon Valley had been decidedly different. And I wonder if you can just kind of give us an insight into the experience of going with your fundraising rounds, and when you walked into rooms with funders. Because I think people here need to know just how challenging the environment is from beginning to end. It’s not just about fixing the existing giant platforms. We have a fundamental challenge here.

TRACY CHOU: Yeah. First, I might back up a little bit and talk about the decision to create Block Party as a for-profit entity. And that was because I believe that there is a business case, and that also that in order to align the incentives going for a capitalist approach, which is building solutions for people who pay for the value that they’re getting, is the best way. In order to build really compelling technology as well, be able to hire the best people in technology for a design and product engineering, also requires being able to pay those salaries. And so VC money, venture capital money, made the most sense to me, as aligning all of those things together. There’s a big opportunity there. And we need that initial capital to get going to build the technology.

So when I went out to raise I felt like, so I have, like, a pretty good shot at making this case. I’m a technical founder, with deep experience in top companies. I have two engineering degrees from Stanford, where I graduated with top honors. Like, this is a good resume that Silicon Valley typically likes. I’m solving my own problem, which they also talk about as a great thing. Like, if you know the problem intimately, because you experience it then you’re very motivated to solve it, and you know all the ins and outs of it. Again, usually something that’s very positive.

I did not have a good experience. There were a lot of people who were skeptical. You might imagine the typical demographic of VC, very white, very male. People were dubious that there was a market. So I was told that this was very niche, and also that it’s already a solved problem, and it will be solved by machine learning, the platform’s already addressing it, so, like, no issue anymore. I suspect some of this has to do with the fact that there’s a lack of diversity in the VC industry and even though our products are for everyone, they do disproportionately serve women and people from marginalized communities, who are more targeted by abuse.

I think there’s also the latent sexism in there, where even the people who thought that there might be a market here told me that they didn’t think that I could solve it, which is very frustrating. By comparison, I saw a number of men trying to tackle the same problem. Fewer credentials, building poor copycats of my product, raise exorbitant sums of money. In some cases, ten times as much. I talked with some of these founders and they would say things like, oh, well, just because, like, I used to work at Google and so, you know, I had the credibility. And I would just have to call myself and say, well, I worked at Google, and Facebook, and Pinterest, and Quora, and also have engineering degrees. But I guess that doesn’t matter when I’m a woman.

So very frustrating experience. Had to power through that. Ultimately did raise money. So very glad that I was able to raise the seed round last year and can actually hire people to keep tackling these problems. But I guess to the point that Moira’s trying to draw out here, there are really systemic issues. If we want to be able to solve these problems, we also need the funding to be able to do so. And when there’s systemic biases in the funders and they don’t believe that there is a problem here, we’re going to have additional challenges in trying to create these solutions.

MOIRA WHELAN: Well, thank you for that, Tracy. And I can’t say, again, you know, when we talk about the thing we’ve all been told of putting on a thicker skin, really, does it get any thicker than Tracy’s, having walked through that?

And Julie, I want to talk about these systemic issues, right? We actually had a question come in on Slido, so please all participate. But it gets to the next question I wanted to ask you, which was around the barriers. And is one of the barriers freedom of expression and where we allow freedom of expression and what is abuse? And I think, you know, you’re at the forefront of, like, how we define the digital experience for people, and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about: Is that a barrier? And then my second part is: Why aren’t more countries doing what Australia’s doing, and how do we help them?

JULIE INMAN GRANT: No, that’s—thank you so much.

And I want to thank Tracy for her perseverance. I’ve been watching her journey from afar, all this stuff about funding and tech bros. And this just shows you how gender inequality can manifest in so many different ways and at so many different levels, and we have to support technologists and entrepreneurs like Tracy to create, building these incredible products. Because I can say, having worked at Microsoft and Twitter and Adobe, that not enough is doing—being done inside and safety is always an afterthought. I mean, even if you look at the patterns of layoffs happening at companies like Twitter and Meta and Microsoft, the trust and safety people go first.

But I guess one thing that we have learned is that we’ll never regulate or wrest our way out of online harms with the speed, the scale, and the volume of content online. It’s always going to be a game of Whac-a-Mole, I guess, or Whac-a-Troll if you will.

But we are also talking about fundamental human behavior and societal ills that work underneath. And that was my experience at Twitter. I joined right after the Arab Spring with the belief that it was going to be a great leveler and people would be able to speak truth to power, but what I started to see very clearly is that women and those from marginalized communities were being silenced. So if you don’t draw a line about what constitutes online hate and online harm and you allow it to fester, then you’re actually suppressing freedom of expression. So it’s a—it’s a difficult line to tread.

Our parliament in Australia, online safety is very bipartisan. And there are different approaches that, of course, different parties would want to take, but collectively the government decided that they wanted to draw a line; and if online speech turns into online invective and is designed with a serious intent to harm, to menace, or harass, that we would draw a line and that we would have an investigative process, that there’d be lots of transparency and accountability, and multiple ways to challenge any decision I make. That’s the right thing. Never been challenged by any decision. And we’re actually helping to remediate harm of individuals.

So the good news is there are more countries coming onboard with online harms regulators. Ireland and Fiji both have online safety commissioners now. Of course, the online safety bill in the U.K. is pending, but that again is a much more polarized debate. Canada’s looking at this. I’m not sure where we’ll get to in the United States.

But we do want tech companies to start stepping up and protecting, empowering, and supporting people online. And that’s why five years ago we started the Safety by Design Initiative with industry to ask them to start providing the tools to do just that—to think about the design process, the deployment, the development process, the maintenance and the refresh process rather than retrofitting safety protections after the damage has been done. There will always be room for specialist tools like Block Party and [Privacy] Party, and we want to facilitate that—you know, let thousands of innovative flowers bloom so that we can all have safer, more positive experiences online.

We also have to keep an eye out in the future. I’m very concerned about the power of generative AI and these large language models and, you know, conversational models with the ability to manipulate—to manipulate young people for extortion, for grooming, for, you know, deep fakes and misinformation and disinformation. We need to think about immersive technologies and the Metaverse.

When we’re, you know, in high-sensory, hyper-realistic environments, the online harassment we’re feeling now will be much more extreme and much more visceral. Think about with haptics and headsets that are picking up, you know, your retinal scans and flushing, what that technology can tell these major companies about you. Neuro technology—you bring that into a toxic mix.

If we don’t start putting the onus back on these technology companies to be thinking about the risks and how their technologies can be misused and have them doing this at the forefront we’re never going to be able to get ahead of this.

So I do hope that more governments come on board. We’ve just established a global online safety regulators network with members who are independent statutory authorities who can demonstrate a track record on human rights and independence. But we’re also making room for observers for governments and other organizations that want to consider best practice in terms of setting up online harms regulators.

And with the DSA and other developments, I expect in the next five or ten years we will have a network of online harms regulators and we will no longer in Australia feeling like we’re at the head of the peloton going up [a mountain] with no one drafting behind us.

I think governments need to get together with the civil society sector and start to counter the stealth, the wealth, and the power of the technology industry. It’s the only way we’re going to get ahead this.

MOIRA WHELAN: Well, and I couldn’t agree more and I should say I think we all want to live in Julia Inman Grant’s internet. You know, that’s definitely the space we want to go.

I’d also point to the global partnership that Australia, the United States, and others have founded to address online abuse that NDI is very happy to support and we like the direction it’s going. But I think you made one really important point and that was the really clear leadership of civil society in both identifying this issue, making it a global issue instead of a personal issue that each politician is facing.

And you had, Fernanda, talked a little bit about the barriers you were facing. So you talked about tech versus government and I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit and tell us, like, where do you spend your time. How do you prioritize both of those needs and who needs to change first? Who needs to change in what way to—you know, this is what civil society does. You put yourself in the middle and you change it.

Please tell us a little bit more about how you’re doing that in Brazil.

FERNANDA MARTINS: Yeah. Sure. It was great to hear from Julie because I was thinking in similar things here and we know—we live at this moment a shift of violence concept and in less years ago when you talk to platforms about gender-based violence online we are talking mainly about dissemination of [non-consented materials].

And now when we try to talk about political violence it’s like we are tension the relationship between freedom of expression and the limit that needs to exist. So it’s interesting to note that when we look at the Brazilian context, in the legislative context we have some laws directed to domestic violence. And when we talk to platforms, they told us about the necessity to protect women related to these issues and violence that is targeted by ex-partners, for example.

But it’s difficult. It is a challenge made—government made platforms and everyone involved in this issue—that we are in public is fair. And not just women; we are talking to marginalized groups in general. So our effort at this moment is to demonstrate that, OK, we demonstrated before that the violence exists, so now what we can do inclusively when we talk about difference what needs to be excluded in platforms, what to be—have flagged that there is content here, it is an insult; but we have—we have, too, platforms that have the policy that public figures need to be more tolerant to attacks and insults, as Meta’s platform. So how we can educate society in general if the example on platforms is, say, women candidate could be attacked, the other could be attacked—women, LGBTQI+ community.

So we need to change the policies, and we need to—we need strong—make strong our laws and their relationship globally. So I think it is a little what we’re trying to do.

MOIRA WHELAN: And I think it’s an excellent point. When you were working with NDI on our program to identify interventions, we identified twenty-six. We have colleagues at Web Foundation, at CG, at other places that were coming up with theirs. We just did an inventory, and we have, like, 450 identified opportunities for changes.

But I want to turn us to Neema, because it all comes back to politics, right? A lot of those changes weren’t just with platforms. They weren’t just with governments. They were also within political parties. How media outlets, you know, cover it. Because even though we’re talking about these major global issues, as a politician that’s still a very personal experience and it’s still very—you know, it’s hard to look at fixing the whole tech system when you’re going through this every day. And I wonder if you can talk about—bring us a little closer to home, and what we need to do, and what are the barriers getting in the way of fixing it, for your own political experience?

NEEMA LUGANGIRA: Thank you. I think one of the things—there are different moving blocks. The first one is the social media platforms. And exactly like what she just said, in the sense is that it is expected because we’re in politics we should have thick skin. But why should I have thick skin? Why should I tolerate abuse? If you’re not able to abuse me online, why should you abuse—if you’re not able to abuse me offline, why should you abuse me online? So the challenges on the social media platforms is although Julie said a positive feedback on AI, at the same time artificial intelligence also has an issue.

In the sense that we have—myself, and my colleagues—we have reported on a number of times, you report on abuse, and it’s written in Kiswahili, for example, or the local language, and you try to even go further and translate it. But still, someone replies and says: This doesn’t violate our rules. And you’re thinking, what rules? This violates every kind of rule. So on the social media platforms, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. And I think one of the things through organizations like NDI is to give us the opportunity also as the women in politics to be in the same room with the decisionmakers at the social media platforms. Because we need to tell them these issues, and they need to hear these issues from us. Not from someone else, but they need to hear these issues from us.

Secondly, when it comes to media, in a lot of countries, unfortunately, media—the way the media do the gender profiling of women in politics also results into abuse. You may find that maybe you’ve been in a meeting. There were several pictures that they were taken—that a particular media took of you. And they decide to use the picture that shows some parts of the body accidentally. You know, maybe your dress went a little bit down, so your shoulder is showing, or the cleavage is showing. And they would use that picture and say: Maybe Honorable Neema said such and such, such a brilliant thing. But because the image they chose to use, it totally shifts the issue and it results into abuse. So sometimes the gender profiling is also an issue.

But the other thing that I’m currently working on in Tanzania is to try and see—there are a lot of laws that are existing that talk about bits and pieces of online abuse. But none are more, like, specific for women in politics. So I’m trying right now in Tanzania to push that we should have a regulatory reform on our political parties act and election acts, so that these two acts recognize online abuse as an offense. Because there’s a number of offenses in political parties acts whereby if you can be proven—let’s say you’re a male, and you have—you’re vying for a position. If it can be proven you’ve done a GBV offense, you can be taken off the candidates list.

So I’m trying to push that online abuse should also be recognized for women in politics, because a lot of the abuse that we get is also related to politics. So that can also reduce a certain group, a group of people, at least those who are aspiring to get into politics. And it can give us the power to now start documenting this. And if you hear, maybe, I don’t know, Gregory has been nominated for something, you can go and use that particular law and say: This person has been abusing women online, kind of thing. So trying to push the political parties act and the election act to do so.

But at the same time, I set up an NGO called Omuka Hub. And what we are trying to do is to strengthen online visibility of women in politics and continentally we are trying to do that through the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance, again, to strengthen the visibility of women in politics. But to do that, organizations that have funding or that are talking about digital development, digital gender gaps. Oftentimes they don’t remember that there’s a group of women in politics. So I would like to stress that whenever we are having interventions, we should have funding also allocated to support the training and the capacity, exactly like what Julie said. A lot of us are online, but we don’t know how to protect ourselves.

Very recently, I experienced the most horrific abuse through WhatsApp. Like, I have—I have experienced it a lot on other platforms, but it was the first time experiencing it in WhatsApp. So these are people I know in an WhatsApp group. And it went on for, like, four days. I didn’t want to leave the group, because I didn’t want to be seen like I’m running away, but it didn’t want to be seeing them. And you can’t help it, because they’re there. And I actually got to learn that you can archive the group, so you don’t see it. I just learned this, like, two weeks ago. So I can tell you.

But that was about, like, three or four days of excruciating, like, emotional rage. And you can’t do anything about it. You want to respond, but people are calling you, you know, you’re an MP. Don’t respond. So you’re keeping quiet. At the same time, you have to show up in Parliament, do your contributions. You have to show face and do all of that. But why should I be doing that? Why should I have to do that, you know?

MOIRA WHELAN: Absolutely. I want to back up to one thing. We’re going to go to two things. We have, like, less than five minutes, and I want us to do two things. One, we got a question from online. And I think one of the things we really tried to do here was show the completely different environments that we’re dealing with, right? We have Australia, we have Brazil, we have Tanzania.

And we got a question asking, we’ve all cited social media regulation as an opportunity here, but that’s a challenge, right? How do you regulate social media from all different perspectives and from all different countries, recognizing cultural challenges, recognizing the responsibilities they have to localize platforms? So I don’t know who wants it—who wants to pick up on the—on the regulation. Maybe Julie and Neema, quickly.

And then after that, what we’re going to do is you have a captive audience. We have the entire digital rights community here. We need to send them out with something to do. We’re all good at that. We’re going to give them a job. So be thinking quickly about what your job is for everyone in this room. But, Neema, and then Julie, and then we can kind of go around.

NEEMA LUGANGIRA: So very quickly, in terms of the regulation, I think one is we cannot avoid regulating social media, but the issue is how to regulate because we still want the environment—you don’t want it to be stringent. And we can learn from other countries who have done it. But the bottom line is, especially for Global South countries who don’t have that muscle that Global North have, what I would like to say is when Global North are negotiating with social media companies, getting into agreements, they should insert requirements that the same behavior they do in their bloc—in the EU or the US, Canada, Australia—they should also behave the same way in Africa. We’re seeing the same thing with data protection. They are doing a great job in the EU, horrible job in Africa.

MOIRA WHELAN: That’s a good point.

We’re going to flip it over really quick to Julie and then, Tracy, you’re up with your pitch. So go ahead, Julie, if you want to jump in on that one.

JULIE INMAN GRANT: I was just going to say, you know, the challenge is that laws are national and local and the internet is global.

Moira, you’re aware that we just issued a number of mandatory codes and are working on standards that will apply to eight different sectors of the technology industry. This has to do with illegal and harmful content, specifically child sexual abuse material and terrorist and violent extremist content. But it isn’t very easy for these global technology companies to sort of quarantine their activities just to Australia, and that applies to safety as well. So the hope is as—you know, and like the European Commission deploying the Digital Services Act and possibly the AI Act, as we’ve seen with GDPR there should be systemic changes and reforms that happen.

But again, the really important thing in bringing different countries together with different needs, different levels of resourcing and funding, and even different political systems and approaches to regulation is going to be challenging. And one of the reasons we set up this global network is to prevent a splinternet so that countries coming onboard can learn from what is best practice.

You know, we did not have a playbook. We had to write it as we went along, and we’re happy to share those learnings. And there will be others who will engage and will try to something different that will be successful. So, again, it has to be a whole-of-society approach to tackling this.

MOIRA WHELAN: Absolutely.

So, Tracy, you have, ironically, like a tweet level because we have less than a minute and we’re going to try to get around. So Tracy, then Fernanda: What’s the pitch for everybody here?

TRACY CHOU: I actually want to comment on the regulation side, which is that regulation can also create the space for more solutions. So it doesn’t just have to be about the content or behaviors that are happening. The reason why Block Party had to shut down our classic product on Twitter was that there was no openness in the APIs, these programming interfaces. And what regulation can do here is require that openness such that we can have these consumer solutions. There’s a bill in the New York State Senate introduced this legislative session, S.6686, which introduces this concept. So just want to put that pitch out there for on the regulation side what we can do.

The other one-line pitch is Block Party has a new product called Privacy Party, and this is making it so that we are teaching people what they should do to be safe online and also helping to automate that. So we have automated playbooks for you to lock down your social media settings. Check it out. Give us feedback. And we want to keep building these tools to help keep people safe.

MOIRA WHELAN: Thank you so much, Tracy.

And Fernanda, last word.

FERNANDA MARTINS: I think the next step is to change the way that we are looking at indigenous, women, Black people, and LGBTQAI+ community because we are—we have been seen as a problem to solve, but we are part of the solution. So we need to be included. The digital rights field need to be include these people, these communities to solve the problem together.

MOIRA WHELAN: Absolutely. And I would also say none of us have mentioned it, but we need more male allies. So any of you are out there, we need men in all of these companies, in government, in civil society joining us in this conversation. So we hope to see—that’s a mantle I would take.

So thank you all for joining us today. Have a great RightsCon. Really appreciate everyone being so brave to share your individual stories.

FERNANDA MARTINS: Thank you.

JULIE INMAN GRANT: Thank you.

TRACY CHOU: Thank you.

NEEMA LUGANGIRA: Thank you.

The post The international community must protect women politicians from abuse online. Here’s how. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While some of the most powerful economic institutions in the world are led by women at the moment, Calviño is unfortunately right. With Kristiana Georgieva at the International Monetary Fund, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the World Trade Organization, Christine Lagarde at the European Central Bank, and Janet Yellen at the US Treasury, we’re given the impression that women are at the helm of economic policymaking. However, this success has not translated into broad representation. Structural barriers continue to prevent many women from reaching top roles in finance and economics—and the problem is more pronounced than in other areas of policymaking.

A leaky pipeline

Of the 190 member countries of the IMF, 26 have women as finance ministers and only 17 have women as central bank governors. That means just 11.3% of policymakers in those two roles are women. The average proportion of women serving as cabinet ministers globally is meaningfully higher, at 22.8%. What is it about the economic portfolio that results in such a drop off?

The reasons for this disparity can be attributed to a variety of factors, such as male-dominance in the study of economics, barriers that prevent women from being promoted, and social perceptions of women’s abilities. These structural and social barriers create a “leaky pipeline,” where small gender gaps in participation at early stages can accumulate over time to result in large disparities at the top of institutions.

Economics requires mathematics and quantitative skills. However, girls often receive the message that they are not as competent in these areas from a young age. The lower participation of women and girls in STEM-related activities is well-documented, and similar patterns are present in economics. Across major US and European academic institutions, women represent around 35% of PhD candidates in economics. Women also tend towards more social research areas such as health, education, and labor while men dominate areas like economic theory, macroeconomics, and finance—the subfields from which top policy leaders are often drawn from. There is nothing preordained about these trends in specialization. They are driven by social expectations, gender biases, and a lack of role models.

However, educational differentials don’t fully explain the disparity. After all, while the role of finance minister or central bank governor requires experience with economics, that doesn’t have to include a PhD. We can look to US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and ECB President Christine Largarde (both lawyers) as examples of such exceptions.

Women are also held back by an array of barriers to promotion in big economic and financial institutions. Men are more likely to be promoted than their female counterparts with comparable qualifications. For example, the US financial sector employs around 9 million workers, with women comprising the majority of the entry-level workforce but holding less than a fourth of the top leadership positions. Women are impacted by the “motherhood penalty” caused by gendered expectations around parenting and work. This penalty can be exacerbated by a lack of parental leave, but even when leave is available, women use it more than men and are stigmatized for it. The promotional gap makes it more difficult for women in economics and finance to achieve the caliber of resume that candidates for finance minister or central bank governors usually have.

Finally, there is an unconscious bias against women’s ability to effectively conduct economic research and policy. As a whole, both men and women rate male applicants higher for positions that require quantitative skills, and female financial advisors are punished more severely for misconduct. Surveys in the US found that when central bankers were introduced without their credentials in a media announcement, people were more likely to doubt the commitment and ability of the Federal Reserve to balance inflation and employment if a woman was the spokesperson. Another study found a correlation between countries with high inflation and a lack of female central bank governors, and suggested that women are hindered by a bias that men are more “hawkish” and therefore more committed to fighting inflation.

Not a quick fix

In 2013, after over two years without a woman sitting on its six-member Executive Board, the ECB committed to a gender diversity action plan. At the time, only 14% of senior managers were women. The ECB’s action plan includes up to 20 weeks of paid parental/adoption leave for either parent and a target of a minimum 50% women in new hires across all levels of staff. As of the end of 2022, 38% at the senior managerial level are women. While 38% is not parity, it does represent a real increase as a result of the ECB’s diversity policies.

As President Lagarde said, “Being surrounded by men is not something new, but it is something that is always disappointing.” The barriers that women face aren’t new and neither are the suggested solutions. There is no magic pill for improving gender representation. Instead, there are a myriad of policies that tackle the different aspects of the “leaky pipeline.” From improving opportunities in education, to committing to equitable hiring practices, the approach to gender equality in economics must be holistic.

Jessie Yin is a Young Global Professional with the GeoEconomics Center.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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The post Only 11 percent of finance ministers and central bank governors are women appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As he pondered the course of the war, Henri-Lévy came to the conclusion that the best way to combat the West’s mounting impatience with the 15-month war and counter the push for preliminary negotiations was to show rather than tell. Instead of writing an essay, the 74-year-old French filmmaker and philosopher took to the road to illuminate the bravery of ordinary Ukrainians against what he calls the “master terrorist” in the Kremlin.

The film, which carefully traces Henri-Lévy’s journey across Ukraine, is about far more than jerky shots of the Frenchman and his crew dodging bullets and drone attacks. It is about Ukraine’s defiance of Putin’s attempt not simply to wage a war of territorial conquest, but to efface the idea of Ukrainian nationhood itself. “If I dare to give a certain logic to this crazy war, it is in the logic of the denial of Ukrainian identity,” he says. “This barbarity matches the logic of denying the very existence of Ukraine.”

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As he journeys from Ukraine’s capital to the east, Henri-Lévy captures the dignity of the Ukrainian people through short vignettes that remain with you long after the credits roll. The Frenchman focuses on ordinary Ukrainians like the elderly woman who appears in the documentary engaged in the quotidian task of stirring a steaming pot of borscht and pleads for an end to the constant violence that has upended her life. She hopes to make it to her seventieth birthday, she says.

In Kyiv, after another Russian air strike hits a woman’s apartment, she apologizes profusely to Henri-Lévy for wearing a dirty black coat. Her kitchen is unusable after the bombing and her crockery is battered, but she’s more focused on the state of her appearance. She takes the French filmmaker to her makeshift bed, a chair inside a bathroom tub where she waited out the aerial assault, and smiles with pride at her ability to snatch a few hours of sleep.

Another scene captures everyday life for those who couldn’t leave cities and towns that Russia has pounded relentlessly in the east. A man who appears to be approaching pension age tries to chop wood with an axe, complaining that it’s warmer outside than inside.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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In Pavlograd, the French filmmaker dons a hard helmet and overalls to cover his black designer suit and spotless white shirt as he descends below ground to watch Ukrainian miners drill iron ore. The precious ore is eventually made into bullet-proof vests for soldiers at the front. After the steel miners are done for the day, they carry on packing care boxes of food and medicine for displaced families.

Henri-Lévy observes that every steelworker is a hero, just like the brave men and women on the front lines. In one of his characteristic meditative asides, he observes that the Greeks and Romans admired heroes in part because they were so rare. “In Ukraine, heroes are everywhere,” he says. The Frenchman confesses that he keeps coming back to Ukraine because it is rare in history to see so many people embody heroism in one place.

The documentary also features moments of exhilaration. Henri-Lévy captures joyous scenes from recently liberated Kherson, where hundreds mill in the main square, some searching for power to recharge their phones and tell their loved ones they are still alive. Perhaps the hardest and most powerful scene comes when Henri-Lévy visits a torture cell that still has fresh blood on the floor. The Russians never actually appear on film, but their depraved conduct casts a dark shadow over the documentary.

This film is anything but neutral and Henri-Lévy makes no attempt to disguise his sympathies. “I am partisan. I don’t give five minutes to the Jews and five minutes to the Nazis,” he says.

The Frenchman has consistently refused to engage in bogus moral hand-wringing when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Instead, he is clear about which side he’s on, as viewers of “Slava Ukraini” will no doubt recognize. “I want the Ukrainians to win,” he commented on May 11 at a screening of the documentary at the E Street Cinema in Washington, DC.

Melinda Haring is director of stakeholder relations and social impact at the Superhumans Center. Jacob Heilbrunn is Editor of the National Interest. Haring and Heilbrunn are both non-resident senior fellows at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Slava Ukraini” was shown at a series of screenings in May organized with the Ukrainian American charity Razom. It can be viewed on Apple TV and YouTube.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Apr 8, 2023

Human wave tactics are demoralizing the Russian army in Ukraine

By Olivia Yanchik

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has not gone according to plan but he still hopes to win a long war of attrition. However, Russia’s reliance on human wave tactics risks undermining morale within his invading army, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Apr 6, 2023

NATO poses a threat to Russian imperialism not Russian security

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s passive acceptance of neighboring Finland’s NATO membership raises serious questions over the Kremlin’s efforts to portray the invasion of Ukraine as a response to NATO expansion, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert May 12, 2023

Andriy Yermak: Italy is defending common European values in Ukraine

By Andriy Yermak

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is right to say that helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian invasion is about freedom, justice, and common values, writes the head of Ukraine’s Office of the President, Andriy Yermak.

Conflict Economy & Business

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post New Bernard Henri-Lévy documentary challenges Ukraine fatigue appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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Woman, Life, Freedom: Eight months of ongoing protests in Iran

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – An in-depth conversation examining the ongoing anti-government protests in Iran following the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini, and the decades-long fight for gender equality and social justice in the country.

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The people of Iran have faced unprecedented violence from their own government in the eight months since protests arose after the death of a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman at the hands of the so-called “morality police.”

But rather than let injustices ranging from beatings to executions quiet them, the Iranian people continue to showcase their bravery while speaking out against these abuses and others, with Iranian women and girls exhibiting particular courage. 

As they do, Iranian women and girls not only tap into a more than century-old history of protest in Iran, but also show new resilience and creativity in their fight for change.

“This is full of energy. This is full of anger. This is different, but with some of what had been before,” Mehrangiz Kar, an Iranian women’s rights lawyer and writer, said at an Atlantic Council Front Page event on Thursday.

She, along with Iranian women’s rights advocate Azam Jangravi and Iranian actress/writer/activist Nazanin Nour, gathered in Washington to accept the Atlantic Council’s 2023 Distinguished Humanitarian Leadership Award on behalf of the women and girls of Iran who are fighting for freedom and equality. 

Read on for more highlights of the discussion with Kar, Jangravi, and Nour, moderated by PBS NewsHour correspondent Ali Rogin, about the reality from the ground and how the world can support the Iranian people.

The ingenuity, and bravery, of protest

• Amid the poisoning of thousands of schoolgirls and other threats of violence, Iran’s girls have made an undeniable mark while engaging in creative dissent, including recording themselves tearing and burning photos of Iran’s supreme leader—which typically mark the beginnings of their textbooks and the walls of their classrooms. “Gen Z is very adept at using TikTok and Instagram, and figuring out how to make things trend and go viral,” Jangravi said.

• On International Women’s Day, five Iranian girls danced unveiled while participating in the “Calm Down” challenge that riffs on the hit song by Nigerian singer Rema and American artist Selena Gomez. The forty-second video gained global attention from mainstream outlets and garnered millions of views online. “We have never seen that level of social media activity to move a movement forward when it comes to Iran,” said Nour, who has used her own platform as an actress and writer to speak out about what’s happening in the country.

• Taking their protest online has also underscored the risks Iranian women face as they speak out. In the case of the “Calm Down” video, the girls were later detained and made to give a forced apology. Many Iranians believe the schoolgirl poisonings have been at the very least tolerated by the Iranian government as punishment for their activism. “It’s very difficult for anybody to believe that a regime that uses facial recognition technology to send tickets to women who aren’t wearing their hijab properly cannot find out who is behind these poisonings,” Nour said.

• It’s a reminder that, since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the women of Iran have put their lives on the line while seeking gender equality and basic human rights. “Women have used activist campaigns, NGOs, to protest the violation of their rights and demand justice and equality. However, they have paid a heavy price for their activism, including suppression, threats, imprisonment, and mental and physical torture,” Jangravi said.

Searching for new solidarity

• All three women said more attention is necessary from the international community to force change from the Islamic Republic and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Now [the world] can understand that it’s not enough that human rights institutions work to remove gender discrimination in Iran. We can understand that all Western governments should work with human rights institutions,” Kar said.

• Some four million Iranians now live abroad, and that diaspora has grown its economic, political, and social clout. “Now we have seen the diaspora rally around the people of Iran. I had never seen that level of unity,” said Nour, who is herself the daughter of Iranian immigrants and was born and lives in the United States.
  
• Even the “smallest action,” such as female officials refusing to wear headscarves while meeting with Islamic Republic officials, helps. “Overall, the global community needs to condemn the actions of the Islamic Republic, not legitimize them,” Nour said, criticizing how the United Nations (UN) gave Iran a leadership role on at the UN Human Rights Council 2023 Social Forum on Wednesday: “It’s an absolute slap in the face to Iranians.”
  
• That decision came just days after two men, including a dual Swedish-Iranian citizen, were executed for running a Telegram group criticizing Islam. “The government is trying to create real fear among the people through execution,” Jangravi said. The actions of those two men, and a number of Iranian women who have joined the protests, including choosing to wear shorts as a form of civil disobedience, showcases how people “from all levels of society” have come together to create change.

Nick Fouriezos is a writer with more than a decade of experience reporting around the globe.

The post Eight months into anti-regime protests, Iran’s women show creativity as they press on ‘full of anger’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In recognition of this reality, the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished Leadership Awards in Washington, DC on Thursday evening honored an all-female slate of awardees who embody “the rising role of women’s leadership in shaping a better world,” as Atlantic Council Chairman John F.W. Rogers put it.  

World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman to serve in her role, leading the trade body as it has navigated unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and global instability. US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is also a path-paver. As the first woman to oversee the US Intelligence Community, she has steered its work to address escalating global threats. 

Nasdaq Chair and CEO Adena T. Friedman, the first woman to lead a major US stock exchange operator, has focused her tenure on modernizing and diversifying Nasdaq. And General Laura J. Richardson, commander of US Southern Command, has used her passion for global security to promote the rule of law, human rights, and democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Rounding out the roster are the brave Iranian women and girls who have stood up, despite enormous risks, to fight the Iranian Republic’s discriminatory laws, drawing support and attention from across the world.  

“This group is a representation of how far we have come,” Richardson said as she accepted her award, “but also a reminder of how much work there is to be done.”  

Below are more highlights from the gala. 

Laura Richardson: “A solution to these complex challenges… starts with the United States” 

• The four-star general issued a call to action for Latin America and the Caribbean: “Our partners are struggling to deliver for their people,” she warned. 
• The region, Richardson explained, is getting hit by the effects of poverty, crime, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. “This desperate situation allows the Chinese Communist Party to step in,” she said, adding that China presents its Belt and Road Initiative to Latin American countries under the guise of wanting to invest. But it’s “really to extract countries’ critical infrastructure,” she explained, with China providing “its debt traps of loans, shoddy work, cost overruns, and bribery of senior officials.” 
• In addition to that, Russia’s “prolific disinformation campaign”—delivered through media companies with audiences in the tens of millions in Latin America—“only further exacerbates” the difficulties these countries face, said Richardson. 
• Solutions for Latin America and the Caribbean’s challenges start with the United States, Richardson argued. “Team USA is committed to democracies across the globe,” she said, explaining that the United States is bringing together all elements of national power to help: diplomatic, economic, military, and informational. “This region is our shared neighborhood, and good neighbors take care of each other,” she said. 
• Richardson noted that women, peace, and security—a policy framework that calls for the participation of women in peacebuilding and conflict resolution—is “a critical component of successful democracies.” Shaping the global future together will take a community, she explained. So “we must be intentional about recruitment, retention, training, and [the] advancement of women,” she said, “because if we take our eye off the ball, we risk losing an entire generation.”  

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: “Support strategic interdependence, not overdependence”  

• Okonjo-Iweala spoke of trying to find the positives in “a world of doom and gloom.” And one place to do that is multilateral organizations such as her own. “We need places where nations can come together,” the WTO head said. “And truly interact even when they disagree—in fact, especially when they disagree.”
• Okonjo-Iweala pointed out that at the WTO, geopolitical rivals such as the United States and China can sit down and talk trade to the benefit of their citizens. “We need to shore up the multilateral institutions we have instead of taking for granted the services they provide,” she said.
• Okonjo-Iweala nodded to the many criticisms of the WTO and acknowledged that multilateral institutions “need to be reformed to be fit for purpose for the twenty-first century.” While there were job losses in recent decades, she added, not all were due to trade—technology and other factors played a role. 
• Meanwhile, Okonjo-Iweala added, “our biggest successes go almost unnoticed.” One she called out was the Information Technology Agreement, a 1996 agreement that has grown to eliminate tariffs on what Okonjo-Iweala said was nearly three trillion dollars in trade in 2021. 
• “So if we let multilateral fora wither, if we fail to preserve what they are doing well and improve what needs improving, the costs will be high,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “Support strategic interdependence, not overdependence.” 

Avril Haines: “Success of our mission depends on our ability to work with others” 

• In accepting her award, the director of national intelligence recalled how in its annual threat assessment—published in February—the US Intelligence Community identified two strategic challenges to national security: competition among great powers, rising regional powers, and nonstate actors for influence over the international system; and challenges that transcend borders such as climate change, health, and security.  
• “The intersection of these challenges [underscores] the importance of working together with partners and allies, private industry, and organizations like the Atlantic Council,” explained Haines, “which bring us together and raise the standard of our work… with the belief that through civil discourse, we can advance our common cause.” 
• That underlying common conviction, according to Haines, is “that a healthy transatlantic relationship is fundamental to the strength and quality of an international system that is capable of addressing today’s challenges.” 
• In guiding policymakers with valuable intelligence, the Intelligence Community must interact with people outside of the community who can test hypotheses, provide alternative perspectives, and challenge biases and underlying assumptions, Haines explained. “The success of our mission depends on our ability to work with others across a range of fields and disciplines,” Haines said, “and it requires us to engage with diverse voices and perspectives from all backgrounds and walks of life.” 

Nazanin Nour: “Stay the course on equal rights for all“

• Iranian-American actress and activist Nazanin Nour joined Iranian women’s rights lawyer Mehrangiz Kar and Iranian women’s rights advocate Azam Jangravi on stage to receive the Distinguished Humanitarian Leadership Award on behalf of the women and girls of Iran. (Mahnaz Afkhami, CEO of the Women’s Learning Partnership, received the award in absentia.) Despite “great personal risk,” Nour said, the women and girls of Iran “are pressing for a brighter future.” 
• Nour explained how after the 1979 revolution, new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini banned women from holding jobs, obtaining an education, accessing contraceptives, and more. “To this day, the clerical leadership of the Islamic Republic has hinged on the repression of women,” Nour argued. “Time and again, the regime’s response to women’s calls for greater freedom has been swift and brutal. But the extraordinary women of Iran have persevered.” 
• Those women have not only persevered, Nour added, but they have also “been in the vanguard demanding change” and learning from the rest of the world about how to secure rights and freedoms. She pointed to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which surged following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. “Today, women and men are marching side-by-side in support of a revolution that was launched by women and girls,” Nour noted.  
• Nour described the movement as “modern… in its language, slogans, and approach,” as women and girls have disseminated their message worldwide by using social media. That, Nour said, has helped create “a truly global movement which, at this moment, is in dire need of collective action; and we can all agree on that.” 
• Nour encouraged the audience to “publicly condemn” the United Nations Human Rights Council’s decision to appoint the Islamic Republic of Iran as chair of its Social Forum. “The Islamic Republic and human rights is an oxymoron, and it’s a slap in the face to the people of Iran that have been brutalized, oppressed, and tortured.” 
• “It is easy for the sacrifices of the protestors to disappear from the headlines,” Nour noted. “I implore you to continue your solidarity. I implore you to support democracy. I implore you to stay the course on equal rights for all.” 

Adena T. Friedman: “When faced with global challenges, we must find global solutions” 

• In line with the Atlantic Council’s mission to advance global prosperity, Friedman noted that “markets are foundational to strong economies and to vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems.”
• “When faced with global challenges, we must find global solutions,” Friedman said. Nasdaq, she explained, aims to use its expertise and technology to “help build trusted market infrastructure all over the world.”
• Nasdaq has a role to play not only in established markets, but in emerging markets as well, Friedman said. “We can support their efforts to bring in more foreign investment through well-functioning, high-integrity, and vibrant capital markets,” she explained. 

The global fight for freedom 

• Almar Latour, the CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, implored attendees in a special address to cast their thoughts to a Russian prison, where Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains detained six weeks after he “was unjustly arrested,” Latour said, “on false charges of espionage.”  
• But while Gershkovich is the highest-profile journalist persecuted for doing his job of late, he’s not the only one. Latour noted the kidnapping of journalist Austin Tice in Syria, the arrest of publisher Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, and the arrest just last week of Nicaraguan journalist Hazel Zamora. “Dictators around the world are determined to stamp out independent reporting,” Latour said. “And we cannot allow them to succeed… The world is watching. It’s watching how the US and democracies around the world respond to this assault on the press. The world is watching how we in this room are responding.” 
• Russia’s war in Ukraine is “a historic inflection point of breathtaking significance,” said Atlantic Council CEO Frederick Kempe.  “Some people say we have to separate the war in Ukraine from China and China’s challenge. I think the challenges are inseparable. This is not a time for half measures. The future of the global order is at stake. Its institutions, its principles, its values, as imperfect as they are, are worth defending. And that is what motivates the Atlantic Council.” 

Katherine Walla is the associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

Daniel Malloy is the deputy managing editor at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

The post The 2023 Distinguished Leadership Awards: Honoring the women shaping the global future appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Public Event Thu, May 11, 2023 • 11:00 am ET

Woman, Life, Freedom: Eight months of ongoing protests in Iran

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – An in-depth conversation examining the ongoing anti-government protests in Iran following the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini, and the decades-long fight for gender equality and social justice in the country.

Human Rights Iran Middle East Women

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speakers

Azam Jangravi
Iranian women’s rights advocate and a Girl of Revolution Street

Mehrangiz Kar
Iranian women’s rights lawyer and writer

Nazanin Nour
Iranian-American actor, writer, and activist

Moderator

Ali Rogin
Correspondent, PBS NewsHour

Introductory remarks

Holly Dagres
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Middle East Programs;
Editor, MENASource and IranSource

HOLLY DAGRES: Good morning, everyone. My name is Holly Dagres, and I am a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, and I’m honored here to give remarks for today’s Atlantic Council Front Page event.

Zan, zendegi, azadi—“women, life, freedom”—the slogan heard across the globe. Contrary to the lack of media coverage, this month marks eight months of ongoing protests in Iran against the Islamic Republic. Protests that are taking place in various ways, from street gatherings, rooftop chants, graffiti, to public displays of not wearing mandatory hijab. This continuity is unprecedented. The clerical establishment is in a tinderbox situation, and it’s only a matter of time before the protesters pour into the streets en masse because the people of Iran have had enough. They want the regime gone.

As I speak over thirteen thousand schoolgirls have been poisoned at schools across the country. Many believe this is a punishment for their participation in anti-establishment protests. Additionally, in the past two weeks there have been an alarming rise in executions, with over fifty-seven executed. Human rights organizations widely believe that these wave of executions are an effort to instill fear and silence dissent. Every day, women remain defiant against mandatory hijab, by appearing in the streets without the veil. And even in some cases, dresses and shorts, items of clothing only seen at home, behind closed doors, ordinary freedoms we here take for granted.

The world admires and applauds the bravery of the people of Iran, but especially their women and girls. As an American of Iranian heritage, I’m absolutely thrilled to introduce this incredible cohort of Iranian women who will be accepting the 2023 Distinguished Humanitarian Leadership Award on behalf of the women and girls of Iran at tonight’s Annual Distinguished Leadership Awards… which I should note will be livestreamed.

Dr. Mehrangiz Kar is a human rights lawyer and an activist. She was one of the first women attorneys to oppose the Islamization of gender relations following the Iranian revolution of 1979. Kar has been an active public defender in Iran’s civil and criminal courts, and has lectured extensively both in Iran and abroad.

Azam Jangravi is an Iranian paralegal, human rights advocate, and former political prisoner, residing in Canada. She is primarily known for being one of the girls of revolution street during the protests against compulsory hijab in 2017. Jangravi was taken into custody in 2018 after removing her headscarf in protest on Enghelab Street, standing atop an electricity transformer box, and waving it above her head. She was later released temporarily on bail and fled from Iran to Turkey, before relocating to Canada.

Nazanin Nour is an Iranian-American actress, writer, and activist. She has appeared on shows such as Netflix’s “Big Mouth,” “Madam Secretary,” and “Persia’s Got Talent,” and can currently be seen in the film “A Thousand Little Cuts” on Showtime. Nour could most recently be seen on stage in Washington starring in the studio theatre production of “English.” She is one of several Iranian Americans in the public eye speaking out on the ongoing situation in Iran.

I’d like to also note that Dr. Mahnaz Afkhami is sick with COVID-19 and was unable to attend, but she is recovering.

Finally, I’m delighted to introduce our brilliant moderator, Ali Rogin, of PBS NewsHour. Ali, over to you.

ALI ROGIN: Holly, thank you so much, and welcome to everybody in the room today and to all our viewers tuning in online, and I’m honored to be joined by these three incredible women.

As Holly mentioned, we are here today to discuss the state of women’s rights and human rights in Iran from prerevolution all the way to the current zan, zendegi, azadi movement and we can do all that in forty-five minutes. That is a very steep task but I know that this is a very well-equipped group to do just that. So let’s get right into it.

The first question I’m going to ask and, parenthetically, before I do I want to note I’m going to ask a few questions and then we’re going to open it up to questions from the audience here and online. So please submit your questions in the format that’s already been presented to the group, and for this panel each of the questions I’m going to ask, the first one will be open-ended, and then each one will be directed to one of you specifically. But I invite anybody to weigh in as well.

So the first question—as Holly mentioned, the Islamic Republic is doubling down on its repressive tactics. It’s increased. There have been thirteen thousand schoolgirls that have been poisoned. Hangings are at a historic high. So what do these oppressive measures tell you about the state of the regime and whether or not it is under pressure from these protests? Whoever would like to begin. Maybe we go down the line.

Dr. Kar?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: OK. As you know, in this movement regular women, students of university, students of high school, all labor and they are involved with that, and in zan, zendegi, azadi all Iranian women from all layers of the society, they are—they were working and now they are working in some other style.

And something that you asked about that, like poisoning, poisoning daughters in high schools, we think the—you know, the reason is because they were working a lot in the movement. And one of their activity was—because probably you don’t know that in schoolbooks, the first page is a picture of Khomeini and the second page is a picture of Khamenei, and the students of high school, sometimes they—you know, they taking out these pictures from their schoolbooks and simply removing—removing—

ALI ROGIN: And they’re removing [them] from the—from the walls?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Yeah, removing, in front of the camera—in front of the camera. And these, you know, film and video posted to some media outside the country, and that’s the reason.

I think they are very against the against daughters in high school. And we think that now this is some kind of revenge sometimes… and the government doesn’t care about that and doesn’t say anything and doesn’t investigate—very serious investigate in that, and they don’t say what is this. Sometimes, they say something that is not true… They say that this is not true. This is something that, you know, they pretend that there is nothing, there is no poison.

And this is something that the people in Iran, now they are very angry with that because the students of—women students, daughters and students of high schools, they don’t have any safety, any security. And the parents now, they are very angry. And they go around the high schools, and they say: If the government cannot guarantee our daughter’s life and our daughter’s security, we will go around the high school and we will, you know, find something that they poison them, and this is our duty if the government doesn’t do their duty.

ALI ROGIN: So that’s going to be a big test.

But I’m curious to get all your thoughts—and I apologize; we didn’t discuss this in advance—but who do you think is behind these poisonings?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: The government.

ALI ROGIN: Is it the government?

NAZANIN NOUR: I mean, everybody believes it’s regime—the regime is complicit, because this is also a regime that has eyes and ears everywhere. They’re able to—they kidnap dissidents abroad, and bring them back to—for execution. They have intelligence on dissidents abroad. There was the, you know, kidnapping that was—that the FBI foiled the plot against a leading voice, Masih Alinejad. So, it’s very difficult for anybody to believe that a regime that uses facial recognition technology to send tickets to women who aren’t wearing their hijab properly, cannot find out who’s behind these poisonings. So, everybody believes that the regime is actually behind this.

And it’s been going on since November of 2022, so that’s months now that this has been happening. And there’s countless videos on the internet from activist groups within Iran that are showing girls in hospitals, you know, with oxygen masks. They can’t breathe, they smell tangerine in the air, or rotten fish in the air. So, it’s very real.

And I know that the regime tries to downplay it, but, you know, it’s also very difficult to kind of loiter around a girls’ school in Iran. And so, again, it’s—again, that’s why it’s very difficult for anybody to believe that the regime is not complicit in this. Parents that have gone to ask questions are met with brute force by regime forces. So, not only are no answers being given, this is still continuing as of just a few days ago, we saw videos from other poisonings. And it’s across all cities and provinces in Iran, too. So—

ALI ROGIN: So, what I’m—what I’m curious about is—Azam, is this an example of the regime really feeling the pressure, that they are taking these steps of poisoning young girls?

AZAM JANGRAVI: Actually, I don’t know. It’s really complicated. But it might be the regime is behind of this situation.

Mehrangiz and Nazanin mentioned about poisoning, and I want to talk about executions. Well, the government is now trying to create fear among people by increasing executions. In the past ten days, over fifty-five people have been executed in—from in which twenty-six Baloch citizens executed. And I think—this by the suppression of Islamic Republic of Iran.

But the protest is ongoing in Balochistan, and every Friday they shut down the internet. And I think we have to talk about Balochistan and Kurdistan and—because the suppression in that areas every time increased by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

ALI ROGIN: That’s a very, very important point.

Azam, I want to stay with you and ask, let’s take a step back and let’s talk about the factors that led to this round of protests.

AZAM JANGRAVI: The protests that begin in mid-September were unprecedented in their scale and duration. People from all level of society, including women of various cities and social classes, came together to demand change.

A key point of contention was the mandatory hijab laws, which require all Iranian women to cover their hair. And although the protests were initially led by women, they soon expand to include men as well. The government attempt to suppress the protest with violence and repression, but the movement continued to grow and gained momentum. People from different backgrounds joined in—driven by a shared sense of frustration with the current government. While there have been some reports of misinformation circulating about the government’s intention, most people understand that the issue of mandatory hijab is just one of the many issue that need to be addressed.

It is clear that until there is real change in Iran, people will continue to demand change and speak out against the injustices in Iran. As I said, the government is now trying to create really fear among people by execution. Two men were executed in the past week, Yousef Mehrdad and Sadrollah Fazeil Zare were executed for just running online group criticizing Islam. Dual Swedish-Iranian citizen also executed last week. Additionally, more than eleven individuals are currently on deaths way—on death row in connection with the now recent protests. The world has been outraged by these killings and has called on Iran to stop them. We need to act now and raise our voices and call on the Islamic Republic to stop their executions.

ALI ROGIN: Nazanin, to Azam’s point about the need to raise your voice, we’ve seen some really interesting subversive ways that protesters, especially the young women and girls in Iran, are using social media. They’re using just formats that the regime is not familiar with to register their dissent. So does that add a new dimension that we haven’t seen before in previous iterations of these protests? And how is that affecting how this message is being communicated to the regime?

AZAM JANGRAVI: Yeah, absolutely. Social media’s been a huge help actually in this movement. It’s the first time that we’ve seen it. Gen Z is very adept at using TikTok and Instagram, and figuring out how to make things trend and go viral. An example of that is the video of the girls of Ekbatan. I don’t know if everybody saw that video, but there’s a song by Rema, a popular Afrobeats artist, with Selena Gomez. And they have a song called “Calm Down.” So these young girls made this dance video, and then they were detained afterward, of course, and had to give a forced apology video.

But that went viral. And that caused everybody around the world, from various countries—I mean, this—it was, like, trending billions in hashtags on TikTok. And it raised awareness for people to understand what’s actually happening in Iran. It gives people outside of Iran a connection to those inside showing, hey, we’re actually more similar than you might think, because a lot of people don’t have information on what Iran was like prior to 1979 either. And so social media’s been a really huge tool in pushing this forward.

And this is also—the Gen Zers are the ones who were at the forefront of all of this. And as Dr. Kar and Azzi said, this is—these poisonings seem to be a retaliation for the fact that they have been ripping up pieces of the supreme leader, they’ve been setting fire, there’s countless photos now that are iconic, that Time replicated, with the girls with their backs to the camera with the middle finger. So all of these things that they’re doing, they’re very smart. They know exactly how to get the attention of people across the world, and it’s—we have never seen that level of social media activity to move a movement forward when it comes to Iran.

ALI ROGIN: And it’s fascinating because it really does seem to be techniques using forums that are just completely unfamiliar to especially the conservative clerics.

So Dr. Kar, for you, you have—for a long time, part of your scholarship has been about tracking the divisions between the moderates, the reformers within the government, and the hardliners, looking from the 1990s to now. So can you get us up to date on what is the balance, what is the tension currently in the regime between moderates and conservatives? Is there any tension there, or is it just completely overrun by conservatives? How do you see those tensions playing out now, versus in previous decades where there was a bit of a reformist element?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: At the beginning I would like say that I practiced as a lawyer twenty-two years in Islamic Republic of Iran, so when I started to practice as a lawyer in Iran I was very young, and immediately we had Islamic—the revolution, Islamic Revolution and victory of Khomeini in this revolution. So I had been in a very complicated situation, not because I was a lawyer but because I was a woman and lawyer. I think two criminal in their eyes, because they—immediately they said that women cannot be judge, so they removed all female judge from judiciary system. And we were not sure that they give us permission to continue work as a lawyer, but they did, and they said because everybody is able to choose a lawyer, probably a mad lawyer, a crazy lawyer, and this is—and Islam—Islam doesn’t care about that. This is something that the people—

ALI ROGIN: If you want to choose a female lawyer, that’s your choice.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Yes, is your choice; if you want to choose a mad, you know, lawyer, that is your choice. And that’s why we could survive. This was the reason, the base of our job.

So I can say that since Khomeini ordered for mandatory hijab, this movement started in Iran and continued. But sometimes it was very slow, it was very hard; sometimes it was getting clear and obvious. I can say that in first decade we were very, very active for mandatory hijab. And for something that is full of, you know, our penal code and family law after they came on power are full of discriminations against women, gender discrimination, and we can say this is some kind of gender apartheid. But we cannot have demonstration. Just somebody like me started talking and writing about these legal discriminations.

After that, the second we had involved with a very bad war between Iran and Iraq, and eight years we had been involved with that. And that’s why everything was closed about women’s rights and human rights, and nobody could talk about that in any other country that is involved with war. So we can say that during the time everything was slow or nothing. Nothing was active in that.

After war, after eight years that the war was over, Hashemi Rafsanjani was on power as president and he ordered open very small, very small opportunity for writing and talking about something, but under control—under very heavy control.

ALI ROGIN: And remind us, this is in the 1990s?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: 1990s, yes. And because I should make short everything, this is history and it is not easy—

ALI ROGIN: No, it—you’re doing a great job.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: After 1990, we reached 1996. And 1996 is very important period of revolution history started because the name is reformism movement. And the president, Khatami, and the people—most people of Iran, for the first time they voted to a president of this system, this political system. After that, because the slogan was different like rule of law and like we should—we should have civil society, it was very important because he ordered and the reformists ordered that women can have independent NGO. And it was very helpful for women. It was the first time that something like that happened in Iran.

But either during this time they didn’t give me permission because it—

ALI ROGIN: How interesting, during the reformist era.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: No, yeah, everything was under control. And they said: No, no, you cannot. You cannot have any NGO. And I do have all documents of that.

But some of young Iranian women, they could register and they could be active as NGO. This was something that started, you know, another kind of—

ALI ROGIN: Activism, or another kind of activism, or—

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Yes, yes, yes, as NGO.

ALI ROGIN: Yeah.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: And it—and they could be very active.

And then, after that, we had some campaign like one million signature and no to stoning and something like that. And Iranians—some part of Iranian women, they came to streets and it was very important. They came to public area, and they were talking and they were giving a slogan against discriminations, not against political system.

But after that, step by step, Ahmadinejad came and stopped everything and suppressed all women activists. And you know, they—most of them, they left Iran, and now they are all over the world. And after that, everybody thought that everything is stopped and never—you know, never be active about women’s rights. But as you know and as you see now, everything is full of energy and started a movement: Mahsa; and zan, zendegi, azadi. This is full of energy. This is full of anger. And this is different with some other that we had been before that.

ALI ROGIN: And to—Dr. Kar, to your point about how many activists left Iran, so now the diaspora is very rich, very, very vocal. And so, Nazanin, I’m curious to get your sense of what is the state of the diaspora now? Are they united around these protests, any more so than perhaps the cohesion was in previous years?

NAZANIN NOUR: Yeah. I want to say, just to that point too that you brought up of differences in the government, reforms, et cetera, that the people—the information coming out of Iran and people I talk to on the ground, most people don’t see any difference between any—they all think it’s the—you know, they’re all cut from the same cloth. So it’s a regime that’s irreformable and irredeemable in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of Iranians.

To the diaspora, yes, I remember in 2009 I was actually in Iran. I got there two days before the election, the Green Movement elections. And I witnessed what happened afterward, which was the violent suppression and oppression by the state to quash those protests. And I remember that it must have been like a blip in the American media. Maybe it was in a forty-eight-hour news cycle, and then it was gone. And so—and we’ve had protests that have built up in Iran since—you know, for the last twelve to thirteen years. But if you just want to go back, 2017, 2018, 2019. There was bloody November in 2019, fifteen thousand protesters got killed within a few days and it wasn’t on the news at all.

And now we saw that actually, yeah, the diaspora rallied around the people of Iran. I had never seen that level of unity in the entire time that I’ve lived in this country, as far as, you know, giving a spotlight and attention to Iran. There’s protests and rallies that have been held in—major protests and rallies held in cities and countries all over the world ever since September. Most of them are happening in cities every weekend.

And while we would love more media coverage, and attention, and a spotlight kept on Iran and all the atrocities—the poisonings, the executions, the fact that the people want this regime gone—the unity that I’ve seen and the level of attention is something that I’ve never seen before. And it’s absolutely necessary and vital to keep, you know, because their internet gets cut off. They don’t have the means, a lot of the times, to get the messages out. So it is up to the people in the diaspora to continue to amplify their voice and make sure that the world hears what they’re saying and what’s actually happening inside of the country.

ALI ROGIN: Absolutely.

Let’s take a couple questions from the audience. I invite anybody who has a question. While you’re thinking of your questions, I’d love to ask, Azam, you were one of the kind of, as we say, OGs of the anti-hijab movement. You stood on an electric transformer, as we said. You’re a girl of revolution street, which is where these protests were happening. So what does it mean to you to see these women and young girls in the streets now?

AZAM JANGRAVI: The fight for women’s rights in Iran has been ongoing for over forty-four years, as Mehrangiz says. One of the first protests against mandatory hijab in Iran occurred on March 8, 1980, where women have used various campaigns, activist groups, NGOs, to protest the violation of their rights and demand justice and equality. However, they have paid heavy price for their activism, including suppression, threats, imprisonments, and mental and physical torture.

In 2018, when I decided to protests against mandatory hijab, there were already ongoing protests against the regime in Iran. The Iranian public was expressing their anger in the protests with a wide range of chants directed towards the regime and its leadership. In the same days, Vida Movahed performed a symbolic act of taking her scarf off and putting it on a stick to peacefully protest hijab laws—a brave move that followed forty years of women’s activism. And this is important because the forty-four years ongoing activism, you know? And I also wanted to be part of these forty-year-old movement and raise my voice against mandatory hijab laws.

As an Iranian woman, I had experienced a lot of problems in my life, particularly when I decided to separate my ex-husband. And these difficulties made me more aware of inequality and separation that Iranian women have to endure. This made me think about what was happening to Iranian women. Then I felt compelled to protest against such cruelties, you know. I believe that each woman in Iran has explained it and said similar problems as this is a year of separation.

My hope was to be part of the activists who cared about creating more awareness in society. And on the day I protested, no one stood by me or supported me when I was arrested, you know. And right now we have seen every man stand for women. This is the more important things. I think this learning and becoming aware process has done so that men are now standing by women, fighting for human and women rights.

ALI ROGIN: To that point—and I’m so sorry to cut you off, Azam, but I do want to get to some audience questions. And somebody asked something that I think ties into this, which is the solidarity that we’re seeing, is that translating to internationally.

Somebody asks, how do you see the influence of regional solidarity among women. Is it active in places like Afghanistan? Are they giving each other energy and support as needed? So let’s broaden it out and look at the regional solidarity that’s happening. What are you all seeing? Whoever wants to take that. And I think, unfortunately, that may be our last question of the session.

NAZANIN NOUR: I mean, there were videos of women in Afghanistan that were marching with signs in solidarity with the women of Iran as well. I mean, they’re neighbors and, you know, African women are under terrible suppression and oppression themselves.

And I feel like there has been a global outcry but there needs to be more. There’s actions that have been taken by various countries. At the U.N. there’s a fact finding mission that was created. You know, people banded together and got the Islamic Republic kicked off the Commission on the Status of Women, for example.

But I still feel like there hasn’t been the amount of solidarity that there needs to be and the amount of support for—it’s a human rights issue. It’s a human rights crisis. It’s a women’s rights crisis. So we need people from around the world in various countries that also believe in women’s rights and human rights to also stand up for the women, girls, and the people of Iran.

ALI ROGIN: Excellent. And somebody else asks a question. With all that is going on we see regional neighbors like Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Iran. What does this mean for the protest movement? Are there any implications with other countries in the region normalizing ties with Iran?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: You mean the relationship—the new relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia?

ALI ROGIN: Yes. Yes. Are there any implications there for the protest movement?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: … We cannot predict the future of these negotiations because a lot of, you know, challenges are between Iran and Saudi Arabia and I don’t believe that everything could be. But we know Saudi Arabia that we—everybody knows is very serious, serious with Islam and with limitations and the discriminations, gender discrimination.

But now we are—you know, we are hearing that something has changed either in Saudi Arabia and this is something that Iranian people they are watching that and they think why they are—you know, they are pushing to a very bad situation, war situation, and Saudi Arabia is going toward and this is something that Iranian women know and they think about it but they don’t compare themselves with women in Saudi Arabia because we had a very different background during shah, during Pahlavi. Pahlavi changed a lot of things in Iran, like women’s rights.

ALI ROGIN: Right.

NAZANIN NOUR: But also anything that—like, anything that legitimizes the government is not going to be a good move. Anything, you know, that emboldens them is not going to be a good move, or solidifies their status.

But it’s not deterring people in Iran from protesting in their own ways. They still do come out to the streets. It might not be to the same effect as it was a few months ago, but the fact that women are taking off their hijabs, men are supporting them—also by wearing shorts, by the way, because that’s not allowed. So, that’s one way that people are dissenting, using civil disobedience. So those types of things are continuing to happen, and they’re not going to stop. And schoolgirls, university students in general, boys and girls, have been protesting for the last few weeks, as well.

So, I don’t believe that that is going to stop what has already started in Iran. There’s no going back, is what the people of Iran say.

ALI ROGIN: In the time that we have left, I’d like to go around. And in a few sentences, can you tell me what you would like to see from the international community, to give the support that this movement needs?

Dr. Kar, would you like to begin?

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Now we can understand that it’s not enough that human rights institution, international human rights institution, work for removing gender discrimination in Iran. Now we can understand that all Western government, they should work with human rights institution because, as my friends mentioned about execution, now it’s very important if they can stop it. Because if everybody is getting crazy in Iran by this situation, and either us that are outside Iran, when we get this news we cannot—we cannot—what could we do?

ALI ROGIN: Right.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Because six others, they do one execution in Iran now. And all of them that call it an investigation, it is not justice. They don’t have lawyer. They don’t have lawyer. And the lawyer is coming from government and it is related with government.

So we can say that international community can do a lot of work for Iran, but so far we cannot see any results of that in this movement that now it is our focus.

ALI ROGIN: Azam.

AZAM JANGRAVI: As an internet security researcher and digital security trainer, my concern is about internet, because the Islamic Republic of Iran, when it wants to suppress the people of Iran, they shut down the internet. And it would be good for Iranian people if the international community find a way to help people for internet, and—especially VPNs, especially, you know, support us for helping people, for internet shutdowns.

ALI ROGIN: Right, we’ve seen that the sanctions don’t really seem to discriminate between uses for speaking out, and for doing business with the regime.

AZAM JANGRAVI: Exactly.

ALI ROGIN: Nazanin.

NAZANIN NOUR: I just think overall, the global community needs to condemn the actions of the Islamic Republic, not legitimize them. Even the smallest action, like heads of states, when they meet with Islamic Republic officials—women not wearing the headscarf. You know, it’s not obligatory; they don’t have to do it.

I think things like, you know, the U.N. just appointed the Islamic Republic to a commission that’s overseeing human rights. And it’s an absolute slap in the face to Iranians, because they just executed two people two days ago, simply for running a social media channel that was questioning religion. So, the world needs to stop doing things like that, because all they’re doing is solidifying and emboldening the regime.

They need to pass legislation and do things that support the people of Iran, instead of emboldening the regime. They need to hold them accountable for human rights abuses. They need to, you know, list—the EU can list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. The US can pass the MAHSA Act. There’s a lot of things that can be done that haven’t been done yet. And I hope to see that.

ALI ROGIN: Nazanin Nour, Mehrangiz Kar, and Azam Jangravi, thank you so much for being here today. This has been a fascinating conversation, and congratulations tonight on the award that you are receiving from the Atlantic Council. It is so well deserved.

I think we can all join in a round of applause for this incredible panel.

MEHRANGIZ KAR: Thank you. Thank you for having us.

AZAM JANGRAVI: Thank you.

ALI ROGIN: So that concludes the program. Thank you so much for joining us.

NAZANIN NOUR: Thank you. Ali.

Watch the event

The post How the women and girls of Iran have fueled their ‘unprecedented’ protests: Bravery, solidarity, and innovation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This female-oriented brain drain is an under-researched and underrecognized phenomenon seriously impacting the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. Part of this is due to the lack of relevant data and a widespread international tendency to underestimate the potential of women’s participation in the workforce. However, the existing data on women’s education, participation in the labor market, and migration patterns demonstrates a correlation and indicates a disproportionate desire for women to seek career opportunities elsewhere.

As women gain access to education, their involvement in the workforce lags. The average female-to-male tertiary education ratio is 108 percent, with more women obtaining university degrees. Yet, the World Bank has reported that the labor force participation rate for women is 19 percent compared to the 71 percent rate for men. The increasing number of women and girls who are provided access to education closely aligns with the increasing number of women who are emigrating from the Middle East. Many of them are migrating independently for career advancement and educational opportunities.

This correlation is evident in Egypt, where half of the doctors—the majority of whom are women—have left the country to pursue career opportunities in the healthcare field. Women are also more likely to remain abroad over their male due to gender disparities in the labor markets back home. Not only are numbers high in countries such as Syria and Yemen, which are currently facing widespread and violent conflict, but countries such as Jordan and Morocco, which should otherwise have high female employment rates and low brain drain rates, remain some of the worst in the world for female economic participation.

Causes for female brain drain  

Although women’s education is increasing rapidly, there are many gendered factors that both prevent women from entering the workforce and deter them from remaining in it. Women are often hesitant to pursue career ambitions or are pushed out of their careers due to workplace harassment, discriminatory employment practices, a dearth of safe transportation options, and social norms. Additionally, women have to take on the majority of childcare responsibilities without a range of public childcare options available to ccompensate for the disproportionate burden.

Women also face low wages, meaning that they expect to receive minimal returns on the heavy investment they made to pursue their careers. This is exacerbated by the fact that women are often the last to be hired and the first to be fired—a phenomenon that increased dramatically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If they do manage to obtain a job or keep it, they have fewer opportunities to advance in their careers once they enter the workforce. This glass ceiling for women in MENA has often been attributed to traditional gender roles and discriminatory practices.

Why women matter 

It is well known that women’s economic participation improves and promotes the overall economic development of the region. If female brain drain continues to accelerate, the entire region will face the consequences, including economic stagnation and the social ostracization of an underutilized demographic. A 2022 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study found that improving the female employment rate to meet the current male employment rate could increase the region’s GDP by up to 57 percent, which translates to $2 trillion. Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon are expected to benefit the most from improving female employment rates. Additionally, improving female representation in positions of power and diplomacy has been proven to encourage more sustainable peace and increased democratization in the region. For these reasons, it would benefit all parties involved to take action against women’s brain drain in MENA.

This can involve deliberate steps to increase economic opportunities for women and foster a more inclusive, female-oriented workplace, such as quota-based initiatives and female-oriented legislation. Legislation would include protections for women against workplace harassment, assistance in childcare responsibilities, and equal payment.

The efficacy of gender-based labor legislation is evident in Gulf countries. While Saudi Arabia suffered a major gendered brain drain in the early twentieth century, women’s participation in the economy has grown significantly, rising to a record 37 percent in 2022 due to gender reforms implemented in the prior five years and the Vision 2030 economic diversification plan. These measures included quota-based initiatives that aimed to increase women’s participation to 30 percent, a ban on gender discrimination in the workplace and discriminatory hiring or firing practices, and the criminalization of sexual harassment. These types of measures must be implemented across the Middle East in order to even the playing field for women in the workforce.

The PwC’s 2022 survey found that the factors enabling women to go into work include relevant workplace policies as well as the ability to work remotely, access to transport, flexible hours, and access to jobs that match their skills. Policymakers must keep these factors at the forefront to compel women to contribute to the labor force. Additional solutions to this problem could include female-oriented grants or scholarships. Finally, the current social norms prohibiting women from career aspirations must be challenged. That taboo is more than a detriment to women—it is a problem for us all. If steps like these are not taken, women will continue to depart MENA at an increasing rate.

Britt Gronemeyer is a Young Global Professional at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

The post There’s a gendered brain drain in MENA. It’s because women are unrecognized and underestimated. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

With a growing economy and a young population, entrepreneurship is a crucial solution to create much-needed jobs while bringing more women into the labor force.

A field study of women entrepreneurs in urban Pakistan, commissioned by the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council in conjunction with the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the American Pakistan Foundation, explored how technology solutions can support women to jumpstart their entrepreneurial ventures, promote their businesses, and facilitate financial transactions. The full report can be viewed here.

Digital access is crucial for entrepreneurship, and its importance is only expected to grow with time. Social media and e-commerce enable entrepreneurs to reach new customers and maintain links with existing ones, build their brands, and expand their networks. Productivity tools for communicating with vendors and employees, bookkeeping, and inventory management are increasingly digitized as well. However, there is a significant gender gap in access, and it is compounded for poorer, less-educated, and rural women.

Women entrepreneurs often lack business skills, education, experience, and access to networks in comparison to male peers. Women are also less likely to own bank accounts, take a business loan, and formally register their business, all of which hinder the business’ growth and success rate. The majority of women who do embark on entrepreneurial ventures rely on their own funds or borrow from a family member for startup capital. This naturally restricts access for women from lower-income socioeconomic strata.

In addition to these systemic barriers, women also face societal barriers, including limited agency in household decision-making, restrictions on mobility, and a disproportionate burden of household labor and unpaid care work.

A growing trend of “social media entrepreneurship” is leveling the playing field. Women are able to monetize their skills despite lacking access to business education and male-dominated professional networks. The study also revealed that the ability to run a business from home helps women to circumvent societal barriers and balance their household duties with work. However, in the long run, this increases the risk of entrenching the same regressive gender norms, thus serving as a potential barrier to further growth.

Nevertheless, increasing access to smartphones and the internet remains the most important lever to boost women’s engagement in entrepreneurship.

Making it easier for women to register for fintech products such as mobile wallets as well as promoting the adoption of mobile wallets can drive women’s entrepreneurship. Women who already have entrepreneurial ventures are found to be generally familiar with mobile wallets, which also indicates that these can be leveraged as an avenue to facilitate formal financial inclusion for these entrepreneurs. For instance, public sector banks can encourage women to use mobile wallet credit history to apply for a business loan.

In addition, most women entrepreneurs are unaware of business skill development and startup incubation programs currently being implemented in Pakistan. However, high penetration of social media indicates that these platforms are ideal channels for outreach and awareness generation. Direct linkages between social media platforms and women entrepreneurs can bring needed business skills where the women already are. One aspect of this linkage could also aim to encourage women from lower socioeconomic classes to diversify their presence on social media, encouraging them to take up platforms with wider reach and greater monetization potential.

In the long term, however, it is necessary to promote society-wide, gender-positive norms, and to gender-sensitize the business ecosystem as well as government and banking regulations.

All four authors are pursuing the Master of Arts in International Relations degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They took on this project as part of their final-year capstone requirements.

Fatimata Ndiaye is currently focusing on states, markets, and institutions, with a regional focus on Africa.

Ishani Srivastava is focusing on development, climate, and sustainability, with a regional focus on Asia.

Estelle Thomas has pursued numerous benevolent ventures as well as forefronted social justice student organizations, in parallel with her academic career.

Yiran Zhan is focusing on international economics and finance, as well as sustainable development.

This research was made possible by the generous support of Seema and Shuja Nawaz on behalf of the Pakistan Initiative of the South Asia Center and the American Pakistan Foundation, in partnership with the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Shuja Nawaz is a distinguished fellow and the founding director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, Washington DC. His latest book is The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood. On Twitter: @ShujaNawaz

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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The “they” is the outside world: the United Nations (UN), the United States, other Western nations, Turkey—countries that call themselves “friends of Syria” but have their own interests at the core of their Syria policies. It’s also Russia, Iran, and the Arab nations that are “normalizing” relations with Damascus.

I know this region well, having traveled there countless times as a senior correspondent for CNN. But this trip in March, after the earthquakes that decimated this region, was different. I was not there just to observe; I was on a humanitarian mission with my charity, the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, or INARA. Greater insight into the aid world and how it functions has worsened my frustrations. I found myself muttering repeatedly, “It’s broken. This isn’t right.”

It has been well over a decade since the first of Syria’s displaced settled in these hills and fields in northwest Syria. They were the residents of Jisr al-Shougour, bombed in June of 2011. Each time I visit, I recall meeting those first arrivals stretching canvas between olive trees for shelter, and the young girl I met sleeping out of the back of her family’s van, telling me they had just come for a few days. Over time, the population swelled with those who fled Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Damascus, and elsewhere. 

The population in Idlib province has more than tripled since people first took to the streets twelve years ago, from under one million to more than three. Hospitals and schools were bombed and not rebuilt. Factories ceased to function or are now in regime territory, meaning the job opportunities and products are inaccessible for those in the rebel-held northwest of the country. Some fields are planted, but many remain unsown. There is potential but no opportunity. 

Every year, as has been the case for more than a decade, there are pleas for more funding for food baskets, for winterization campaigns with images of little faces shivering in subzero temperatures. Every year, funding efforts fail to meet their targets and those pleas go unheeded. Fair or not, the prevailing sentiment in Idlib is that UN agencies responsible for shelter want to keep the population in tents.

INARA in partnership with Kids Paradise provided Ahlam al-Ahmad and her family with hygiene kits, childrens toys, clothing, and food after their tents flooded. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

A little boy plays in muddy and sewage-filled waters at a camp in Syria. There are growing concerns about the spread of diseases such as cholera. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

Ahlam al-Ahmed stands among what she and her family have been able to salvage from the floods. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

The author at a camp INARA set up in partnership with Syria Forum for those who lost their homes in the earthquake. Photograph courtesy of Arwa Damon.

I met Ahlam al-Ahmad as she slogged through knee-deep mud. Floods had just ravaged her small camp on the edge of agricultural fields in Idlib, the water so powerful it swept away everything in some of the tents, drowning clothes, kitchenware, mattresses, blankets, small stores of rice, potatoes, and jars of lovingly prepared Ramadan stuffed vegetables. 

Like hundreds of thousands here, she was displaced by war, running away with nothing but the clothes she had on. It has been all but impossible for her family to get back on their feet, to rebuild even the smallest fraction of what they lost. 

“Why do we live here?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s for work. We women work in the fields, it’s the only thing available.”

“I mean we had sorted ourselves out, sort of,” she continues, her voice cracking as she points to what they were able to salvage from the muck. It took her family years to achieve this meager progress—an existence in three tents, one of which acts as the kitchen. But even with four of them working the fields, they couldn’t afford a home with walls—not when their labor yields just three dollars a day. And there is such a yearning for walls.

Adults yearn to lean back against a wall, while many young children don’t even know what it is to live within a stable structure.

Moving beyond an emergency response

Spiraling inflation, coupled with rising global prices, has pushed this population even deeper into poverty. And yet last year the UN barely met half of its funding goal for Syria. The argument has long been that funding the sorts of projects that would allow greater autonomy for the northwest region—such as building proper shelters, factories, and schools—was too risky, what with the incessant and unpredictable Russian and Assad regime bombing campaigns. 

However, for more than three years now the battle lines have remained stable, and the skies no longer buzz with fighter jets raining death and destruction. Yet the humanitarian framework around Idlib is still viewed through the prism of emergency response. That needs to change.

Aside from the emergency response to the recent earthquake, the bulk of funding opportunities for projects in Syria are for small-scale development—efforts such as vocational training and microgrants—and civil engagement interventions. These activities provide little help to the population. Instead, they permit outside players to claim that they support development.

Civil engagement is important and can bring together inspiring minds, but it’s a fruitless exercise based on donor desires and not realities on the ground. “You can’t expect someone who is tunnel-focused on mere survival, on the next meal, to be able to have the mental capacity to focus on anything else. That is how they keep us weak,” explains Hasan al-Moussa, a Syrian friend of mine active in the humanitarian and development space. 

Vocational training and microgrants are important, but they need to be significantly scaled up to have a real impact.

At the same time, there is division among the UN Security Council members not just over cross-border access, but also over whether the focus should be on emergency, early recovery, or development. The emergency cycle that northwest Syria has been stuck in for more than a decade is creating dependency and perpetuating poverty, ignorance and disillusionment, and even that response is falling short of the needs. Early recovery and development projects, which would lay the framework to break the cycle, are too few, too small, too short term. The pattern of the current approach is paralyzing the population in a state of helplessness.

On the ground, the bleak situation can feel almost deliberate, an attempt to keep the population unemployed and uneducated. Just enough comes in for outside officials to point to certain projects and make themselves look good, but nowhere near enough to break the cycle of dependency. More money needs to be put into funding projects that create large-scale job opportunities and access to education for those who have none.

Helping the people of Syria will take moral courage that has long been lacking, and it will take—for once—those who hold the purse strings and power over northwest Syria to put their own politics and interests aside. People deserve the chance to regain agency over their own lives. That is the real humanitarian thing to do.

Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA), a nonprofit organization that focuses on building a network of logistical support and medical care to help children who need life-saving or life-altering medical treatment in war-torn nations.

The post It’s broken: The humanitarian response is keeping Syrians in a loop of helplessness appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As the first country to pass a law codifying women’s vital roles in building peace and security worldwide, the United States has the potential to become a leader in advancing the gender-equality fight. However, it has yet to tap into the power of its cities and states—even though mayors and governors are key to implementing the country’s foreign policy goals through partnerships with other local leaders across the Americas. The United States must deepen its commitment to women’s peace and security by taking these principles beyond the national level.

Six years ago, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Act created a government-wide WPS strategy. Since then, US agencies have identified four lines of effort to achieve its objectives.

Federal agencies such as the departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have developed implementation plans, outlining their WPS objectives, actions, and goals. But for all lines of effort, cities and states can play a pivotal role that is not sufficiently reflected in US policy.

As the fourth line of effort explains, partnerships are a crucial part of the United States’ WPS strategy. In the realm of city- and state-level diplomacy, mayors and governors are already forming important partnerships with their counterparts across the Americas, which could prove useful in achieving all WPS goals. Those relationships are key because the Western Hemisphere includes the ten most violent cities in the world, and women and girls are disproportionately impacted by such violence. Women and girls across the hemisphere are vulnerable to gang violence, femicide, and sexual harassment in public spaces. A 2022 survey found that 89 percent of women interviewees in Buenos Aires had experienced sexual harassment on public transportation. In Lima, Peru, nine of ten women between the ages of nineteen and twenty-nine have been victims of street harassment. The Mexican municipality of Juárez, Nuevo León registered over twenty femicides and 158 disappeared women and girls in 2022. According to a survey by Stop Street Harassment, 66 percent of women reported experiencing sexual harassment in public spaces across the United States.

The United States has recently made great strides in incorporating local leaders into a whole-of-country foreign-policy strategy, but it has yet to do that with its WPS strategy. The United States already has the structure for doing so; last year, the US State Department launched a new Unit for Subnational Diplomacy led by Special Representative for City and State Diplomacy Nina Hachigian, who was formerly deputy mayor of international affairs for Los Angeles. In her first “dipnote,” she wrote about her office’s aim to create channels for greater connectivity and collaboration between local leaders. That connectivity could provide a channel for achieving the United States’ WPS goals.

Hachigian will be in attendance at the first-ever Cities Summit of the Americas in Denver later this month, which will provide local leaders with an opportunity to share knowledge about the strategies they deploy at home to advance WPS principles. At the convening, the State Department must ensure that conversations about building safer, resilient, and more accessible and sustainable cities include gender-sensitive perspectives that shed light on the experiences of marginalized groups. It should do more than just avoid “manels” to promote gender equity and women’s peace and security: Organizers must also dedicate time to discussing, with all participating mayors, the impacts of migration, climate, and housing specifically on women.

In the near term, the State Department should prioritize gender equality in the new “Cities Forward” initiative, which was announced last year to help cities in the Americas share knowledge about solving various urban issues and will be formally launched this spring. Since this program will direct US government funds to support urban development, it is crucial that the city-level action plans demonstrate a disaggregated impact on women and girls.

In the long term, the United States should embed WPS into its city- and state-level work by ensuring that women meaningfully participate in subnational diplomacy, that women are protected and have freedom in cities, and that cities and states create deep partnerships focused on gender equality:

• Ensuring women’s meaningful participation: The United States should ensure that its city and state diplomacy strategy supports current women leaders and helps them learn from each other’s experiences. Despite the growing numbers of local female elected officials in the Western Hemisphere—including Santiago Mayor Irací Hassler, Bogotá Mayor Claudia López, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and Intendant of Montevideo Caroline Cosse—the glass ceiling persists. Within the last year, only 11 percent of Latin American large cities and 26 percent of large cities in the United States have had women mayors. On the sidelines of major urban conferences such as the Cities Summit, the C40 World Mayors Summit, and Urban20, the United States could host off-the-record convenings with women mayors to strengthen international partnership opportunities and identify obstacles to reaching political parity.
  
  The United States should also, through its cities and states, engage civil-society groups that are advocating for women’s rights in cities and thus fostering an environment conducive to female political leadership. Women represent roughly 52 percent of the public-sector workforce in Latin America and the Caribbean and play a crucial role in supporting local governments. Civil-society networks such as La Red Mujer y Hábitat are working to advance women’s rights in urban areas. The Subnational Unit should encourage US mayors to work with these civil-society groups and public-sector leaders when forging partnerships with Latin American and Caribbean cities, particularly those led by male mayors, to ensure that discussions include a gender perspective and create space for women’s participation.

• Strengthening women’s protection and freedom in cities: The United States should collaborate with local governments and bolster the capacities of municipal justice systems and security sectors, adopting a gender-sensitive approach, to effectively prevent and respond to gender-based violence. By recognizing the ways in which violence affects female populations, in all their diversity, cities can develop more targeted and effective responses. The United States can learn from other cities’ approaches: Kelowna, Canada, introduced programming between community groups and local police to rebuild trust and accountability after multiple indigenous women were murdered or disappeared. Durango, Mexico, uses real-time data to identify and classify high-risk zones for women, making it possible to deploy awareness and security campaigns tailored to the distinct needs of various populations. The Unit of Subnational Diplomacy should collaborate with the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues at the US Department of State and the Office of Women, Peace, and Security at the US Department of Defense to analyze these varied city-level approaches and develop blueprints for city-level WPS plans in the United States.

• Deepening partnerships to support gender equality: The United States should scale up and coordinate existing efforts that are already supporting women’s equity in cities. The City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE)—formed by leaders in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and four other major global cities—aims to tackle gender disparities in access to government services. The State Department’s subnational unit should assist in an expansion of the CHANGE network and other city-led initiatives to reach a more diverse body of cities across the Americas.
  
  The United States should also amplify and collaborate with existing local grassroots networks—such as the Association of Women Council Members and Mayors of Bolivia or the Network of Women Vice Governors of Peru – to foster regional connections between women leaders and support existing initiatives from the bottom up.
  
  Additionally, the recently announced USAID Network for Gender Inclusive Democracy could offer a platform to support women’s political and civic participation and leadership in cities. The new network aims to promote coordination, knowledge-sharing, and policy advocacy to advance gender equality. The special representative for subnational diplomacy should advocate for the participation of state and city leaders in this new program. Including local leaders in this network can help the Subnational Unit enhance its efforts in championing gender-sensitive strategies, while simultaneously providing a local perspective to national-level discussions on gender and democracy.

The United States’ approach to city and state diplomacy is still in development. The Unit for Subnational Diplomacy is barely six months old, and Hachigian’s team has the opportunity to champion a gender-sensitive security strategy across the hemisphere. By 2050, nine in ten people in the United States as well as Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to live in urban areas. The leaders who run these areas must be empowered to make them safer and more equitable environments for all.

Willow Fortunoff is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Diana Paz García is a conflict resolution graduate from Georgetown University specializing in gender-based violence and nontraditional security threats.

The post How states and cities can lead the US fight for a gender-sensitive security strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The situation is, in part, being made worse by climate change, which is increasing temperatures and changing weather patterns, compounding the hardship already caused by droughts. According to the International Monetary Fund, a third of the world’s droughts occur in Sub-Saharan Africa; meanwhile, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Horn of Africa is experiencing the longest and most severe drought on record. These conditions are weakening food systems across Sub-Saharan Africa, an area in which agriculture, forestry, and fishing make up 17.2 percent of the gross domestic product—and substantially more in countries like Sierra Leone and Chad.

But there’s more to this food insecurity trend than climate change; Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused uncertainty in the global food market, disrupting the production and trade of key commodities. Russia and Ukraine are significant suppliers of oil, wheat, and maize, and disruptions to the supply chain, combined with local conflicts in some countries, have caused inflation to soar, with food prices increasing as much as 55.6 percent in the Horn of Africa.

Fighting these rising levels of food insecurity requires a whole-of-nation approach. But countries in these food-insecure regions aren’t doing enough to harness the economic and agricultural potential of half their populations: women. For example, discriminatory laws that hamper women’s access to land and financial services are still in place in some countries. In order to fight food insecurity in full force, these countries must ensure that women are equipped with the exact same resources as men: both land itself and the decision-making power to determine how to use that land in the most productive way possible. Policymakers in these food-insecure countries should take the following actions:

Equalize inheritance rights

Some countries in these food-insecure regions have made significant strides recently in passing reforms that impact women’s lives in some respects—but they have faltered in passing meaningful reforms related to improving access to assets and entrepreneurship opportunities for women.

According to the Center for Global Development, agriculture accounts for 56 percent of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and women account for 57 percent of agricultural workers. The informal sector accounts for 50 to 80 percent of economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa—activity that includes the sale of food. And like the agricultural sector, the informal sector is a major employer of women: In Africa, 89.7 percent of employed women work in the informal sector. Yet despite the roles that women play in these sectors, only 30 percent of women own land in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The discrepancy in land ownership extends in part from inheritance laws. In some of these food-insecure countries, inheritance plays the primary role in determining land ownership. Some inheritance laws across the region are—or were initially—patriarchal, favoring men in the division of property. There have been some signs of progress in protecting women’s rights to inherit property; for example, in Uganda, lawmakers recently amended the Succession Act to ensure equal inheritance rights between men and women.

However, Uganda’s Succession Act was the first inheritance reform implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa since Mali’s in 2011, according to the World Bank, demonstrating the slow pace of progress. More countries must follow suit by implementing their own amendments or fresh, new laws on inheritance rights.

Support women’s entrepreneurship

Owning land goes hand-in-hand with access to financial services. In countries across these food-insecure regions of Africa, farmers must have land titles in order to access the credit necessary to increase agricultural productivity by hiring workers, purchasing animals or farming equipment, and covering transportation and storage costs of their goods. Credit supports entrepreneurship, which promotes innovation and the accumulation of wealth—both of which are integral to fighting food insecurity in the region. However, just as women’s rights to own land are hindered in some countries, their rights to enterprise are sometimes hindered as well.  

According to the World Bank, 71 percent of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have laws that prohibit financial institutions from discriminating based on gender, and women often face more stringent loan arrangements than men when they do access credit. Furthermore, according to the International Monetary Fund, in Sub-Saharan Africa, just 37 percent of women own bank accounts compared to 48 percent of men. If a woman must rely on a man to open a bank account, take out a loan, or register a business, she cannot fully exercise her rights as an entrepreneur to hire workers or freely determine the agricultural methods she uses with the hopes of increasing output.

All countries in these food-insecure regions of Africa should criminalize gender-based discrimination with regard to credit. Allowing women an equal opportunity to receive loans encourages entrepreneurship, leading to more production and competition in the agricultural market. Benin’s Order No. 2349-5—which was implemented in 2022 and prohibits credit, banking, and decentralized financial systems from using discriminatory practices in granting access to credit—can serve as a model for other countries.

Putting the law into practice

Laws are only part of the solution. Guaranteeing equal access to land and credit requires systemic change. Localities and financial institutions need to make a concerted effort to ensure that women are aware of their rights and encourage them to embrace the opportunities to own land or become entrepreneurs.

Activists and government officials should work with local leaders to hold seminars for women, outlining their rights to own land and offering to process land titles. In the private sector, financial institutions can create campaigns specifically marketed towards women, publishing advertisements in print, social, and broadcast media that encourage women to apply for credit.

By taking concrete steps to ensure that women have equal access to land and entrepreneurship, countries can empower their full populations, bringing major benefits for the economy, agricultural productivity, and food security.

James Storen is the program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center.

The post Tackling food insecurity in Africa will require securing women’s rights. Here are two ways to start. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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But what should policymakers know about the lingering challenges that women in the region face? And what are the specific measures that can bring about real change? Below, five experts on the region provide their recommendations for strategies that can help promote gender equality and advance women’s rights across Latin America and the Caribbean.

How should Latin American and Caribbean countries begin their renewed efforts to narrow the gender gap?

Latin America and the Caribbean have historically struggled with gender inequality and discrimination, particularly against women.

Economic empowerment is a crucial way to help attain gender equality. However, achieving economic empowerment requires solutions that are designed with more than the near term in mind. It is essential to create opportunities for women in which they can earn a sustainable long-term income, and it is equally essential to design these opportunities in a way that meets the needs of all women and the girls or elderly women in their care. Regrettably, gender biases are rampant not only in the workplace but also in the policymaking sphere, which significantly hinders female candidates from reaching their full potential. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, the global gender gap in politics will take more than a century to close if the current gender biases continue. To overcome this obstacle, policymakers need to introduce targeted policies aimed at reducing gender discrimination.

Closing the digital gender gap is also an important step. According to the US Agency for International Development, 1.1 billion women and girls in middle- and low-income countries do not have access to mobile internet, putting them at a disadvantage and limiting their economic opportunities. By closing the digital gender gap and by ensuring women can gain access to digital skills and literacy, societies—and their economies—will reap significant spillover rewards.

Additionally, the issue of violence against women and girls in the region cannot be ignored. Domestic violence correlates with juvenile violent behavior, meaning that as young people grow up in the presence of domestic violence, they are more likely to replicate the same behavior later in life. Furthermore, women are vulnerable to becoming subject to emerging crimes (like trafficking) due to higher levels of insecurity. According to a United Nations report, 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence, and this percentage is even higher in Latin America and the Caribbean. To achieve true gender equality, policymakers must prioritize measures that address violence against women and girls. These measures include providing adequate support to survivors and holding perpetrators accountable for their actions.

—Isabel Chiriboga is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

What is the relationship between women’s economic empowerment and broader social issues such as poverty, inequality, and gender-based violence? How can these problems be addressed?

Economic empowerment must be understood as a holistic, cyclic process in which multiple social and economic-development dimensions are linked, building upon each other over time. It is necessary to enact immediate solutions for women in vulnerable situations. A first solution could include making cash transfer systems available to women; these systems allow them to not only survive but also thrive, by respecting and guaranteeing their decision-making capacity. A second solution could include creating systems that allow women to ensure they have a steady flow of income for the medium and long term; to accomplish this, those systems could offer them support in entering into the formal labor market or in pursuing a self-employment opportunity in specific cases. It is important that these programs target not only women but also their dependents— both minors and seniors whose care, often provided by women, presents one of the biggest barriers to women’s economic and job stability. A third solution could include economic empowerment policies that particularly address girls, giving them employment skills and protecting them from threats to their independence that loom from childhood, such as teenage pregnancies or forced marriages.

Finally, it is important to note that women’s empowerment processes in some social spaces, especially patriarchal or sexist ones, can generate conflict or violence against women. Mechanisms for preventing violence and protecting women must be provided, including social and institutional support for empowerment projects and the women at the center of them.

—Erika Rodríguez is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, a professor and associate researcher at Complutense University, and a special advisor to Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the European Commission.

What policies can best address institutionalized gender biases and discrimination in Latin America’s political and official leadership structures?

To address women’s underrepresentation in politics and leadership, policymakers should look at some of the factors that contribute to a significantly lower number of women on the ballot and in official leadership structures. In other words, rather than create an expectation of more female candidates, leaders should try to address some of the persistent gender biases that present obstacles for female politicians already on the scene. The data on the various gender biases exists—and the region sees the unfortunate outcome of those gender biases: Mostly men are elected or appointed to key leadership roles.

There is copious data now available on women being more frequent targets of abuse and threats online in comparison to their male counterparts. On March 5 this year, Costa Rica’s Latina University published research that showed there is significant political digital violence toward women, with most of the attacks included in the research focusing on casting doubt on the capacity for women to be in public service, on disparaging women’s appearances, and on issuing physical threats. That kind of consistent harassment becomes a deterrent for women when they decide whether to take a step forward and aspire to political leadership roles. That digital violence should be addressed.

Policies aimed at reducing gender discrimination should not only focus on recruiting and electing, but also on supporting and protecting women in public leadership roles. Those policies can offer an effective strategy to minimize existing gender inequality and create a safer and more democratic environment.

—Erika Mouynes is the chair of the Atlantic Council Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center’s Advisory Council and former Panamanian minister of foreign relations.

How can the development of digital skills and literacy among women in Latin America help promote innovation and gender equality? How can public-private partnerships help foster women’s digital literacy?

In Latin America, women still lag behind men in terms of their access to the internet and mobile broadband, mastery of digital skills, and representation in digital jobs. Leveling this playing field is an economic imperative—it can help grow the pool of qualified talent for local and regional companies, empower women to access good-paying jobs, and close gender gaps in pay and labor-market participation, which are directly correlated with gross domestic product growth. This economic imperative has captured the attention of business leaders across the region who recognize that businesses benefit from employing qualified women and that limited digital parity is a drag on growth.

But while the economic case for closing the digital gender gap is strong, it’s important to look at it as a social imperative too. Empowering women with digital skills and digital literacy allows them to successfully navigate an increasingly digital world. Indeed, digital literacy is now needed to open a bank account, access health care, take full advantage of quality education opportunities, grow a business, and thrive at work. Around the world, women are known to invest more in their families and their communities than men. This means that the benefits of closing the digital gender gap will generate positive spillover effects that will be felt by societies and economies more broadly.

The private sector has a vested interest in closing the digital gender gap. My experience working in the consulting sector and with clients has shown me firsthand that diverse teams think more creatively and operate more dynamically. This, combined with the many other socioeconomic benefits of gender parity, makes it clear that the private sector must play a role in closing the digital gender gap and that the business case for doing so is strong.

The private sector has an important role to play as a partner for governments. Private-sector businesses, as significant employers, can help public officials design better policies that take into consideration the skills gaps in the labor market. And the private sector can provide insights about how policies—related to everything from health to education—impact women every day. Finally, the private sector can lead by example by creating an environment in which women can thrive and learn and using peer pressure across the sector to push all companies to get on board.

—Ana Heeren is a member of the Atlantic Council Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center’s Advisory Council and senior managing director at FTI Consulting.

How do crime and violence affect women and girls in Latin America and the Caribbean? What strategies can governments employ to help prevent, address, and respond more effectively to that violence?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, women and girls are at greater risk of facing violence. According to estimates conducted in 2018, one in four women in the Americas have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their partner. Recent evidence shows a correlation between juvenile violent behavior and exposure to domestic violence during childhood. Women also report higher levels of insecurity: A study in three cities in the region showed higher levels of concern among women than men regarding their safety while taking public transportation (72 percent versus 58 percent in Buenos Aires, 61 percent versus 59 percent in Quito, and 73 percent versus 59 percent in Santiago). In addition, women and girls are more likely to be affected by emerging crimes. Women and girls constitute the majority of victims of human trafficking. Women environmental or human-rights activists also face attacks (1,698 violent acts in Mexico and Central America from 2016 to 2019), and about nine out of ten women have experienced or witnessed online violence.

My team at the Inter-American Development Bank proposed a strategy to respond to this complex problem in a coordinated way. The approach includes initiatives focused on empowering women and preventing violence. It includes recommendations on how to ensure that any actions or initiatives intended to solve this problem are targeted toward the most vulnerable women and girls and are tailored toward the specific social, political, and economic contexts of each community. It also includes guidance on strengthening the capacities of the citizen-security and justice sector to detect, prevent, address, and respond to violence. Moving forward, it is necessary to have better data to generate evidence-based policies.

—Nathalie Alvarado is a technical leader and coordinator of the Citizen Security and Justice Cluster at the Inter-American Development Bank.

The post What policymakers should know about improving gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The barriers South Asian women face in the workforce are deep and intersecting, including but not limited to: accessing digital technology; disruptions to supply chains; the dual burden of managing eldercare and childcare; limited physical and mental health services; and the increased risk of gender-based violence (GBV). These are key obstacles to women’s labor force participation, and all were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a joint report published by the International Finance Corporation and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), 35 percent of women entrepreneurs in India reported that they have suffered declining revenues due to COVID-19, and 72 percent of female small business owners in Sri Lanka reported experiencing difficulties accessing their usual financial services. The same report found that female job-loss rates resulting from COVID-19 are about 1.8 times higher than male job-loss rates globally.

Women’s participation and advancement in the labor force not only benefits women themselves, but also men, families, communities, and the entire nation. Despite this, women’s work is a minefield of visible and invisible barriers, rooted in inequality, patriarchy, and privilege. Global corporations, civil society, governments, and businesses across the South Asian region and the globe are committed and poised to support women’s advancement in the workplace, and are well positioned to accelerate and complement these efforts through direct investments and advocacy. But, first, two key areas must be explored, and they serve as the foci for this issue brief:

1. Raise awareness of key economic challenges facing women across the region.
2. Explore best practices and opportunities for addressing these pressing challenges.

To date, these efforts have been limited and/or siloed within particular domains and there is a paucity of scientific evidence pointing to how these efforts are effectively supporting women’s economic recovery.

This issue brief describes cross-cutting themes, a proposed theory of change, and recommendations that emerged from the Atlantic Council and US Department of State expert convening, “Future of Women and Work in South Asia.” The convening’s goal was to foster cross-sectoral collaboration and catalyze knowledge sharing to support women’s economic empowerment in South Asia. The project also aimed to elucidate strategies for increasing philanthropic and corporate investments to appropriately address the challenges and barriers women face.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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Afghan and Iranian women continue to be denied their basic human rights, and this shared struggle is built on an overlapping Iranian-Afghan history and civilizational space known as the Iranian plateau.

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Though Afghan women have been included in certain peacebuilding efforts, these experiences were largely tokenist and minimally empowering.

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Understanding “rape culture” in Bangladesh, India, & Pakistan

By Rudabeh Shahid, Kaveri Sarkar, and Azeem Khan

Countless examples of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Asia from last year raise significant concerns about so-called “progress” made in improving women’s standing and fighting rape culture in the region. Political discourse in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh is deeply misguided regarding such issues, often leading to systematic victim-blaming which—knowingly or unknowingly—helps the perpetrators.

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The post The future of women in India: Barriers, facilitators and opportunities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 20, to reflect on the twenty-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative held a discussion to amplify the voices of Iraqi youth. “Trajectories of Iraqi youth two decades after the 2003 invasion: Between aspirations and reality” featured introductory remarks from the Director of the Iraq Initiative, Abbas Kadhim, and was moderated by Hezha Barzani, a Program Assistant for the empowerME Initiative at the Atlantic Council.   

In his introductory speech, Abbas Kadhim stressed the importance of including youth in the debate about the future of Iraq, arguing that “youth are not only entitled to be present, but are called to lead the debate, as they will be the most affected by it”. This was further emphasized in Hezha Barzani’s introduction, where he noted that 60 percent of Iraq’s current population is under the age of twenty-five. 

The panel featured empowerME Program Assistant Nibras Basitkey, who highlighted the importance of being solution-oriented when discussing the future of Iraqi youth. It also featured a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Shival Fazil, who claimed that Iraqi youth “do not feel represented by the current system of government in Iraq and are stretching across ethnic and religious identities in favor of an issue-based coalition, seeking political reform”. Adjunct fellow Hamzeh Hadad from the Center for New American Security noted that the years following the invasion “were tumultuous, with Iraqis facing global issues” such as the expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the global pandemic. This point was built upon by co-Founder and President of Sinjar Academy, Murad Ismael, who claimed that “youth in post-ISIS Iraq are rejecting extremism”. 

Problems currently facing Iraqi youth

A consensus was reached among the participating panelists that the present nature of the Iraqi youth is characterized by their collective desire for reform and coalition-building.  The emerging trend of national movements are transcending ethnic, religious, and cultural lines. Hamzeh Hadad explained this phenomenon as being “a product of Iraqi unity against ISIS as well as the younger generation’s exposure to sectarian violence in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s rule”. He also explained the unification of Iraqi youth with the failure of the Iraqi leadership class, which resulted in a widespread protest movement. Another problem currently affecting Iraq is the persistence of internal displacement accompanied both the 2003 invasion and the ISIS insurgency. The second wave of displacement that took after 2024 in Iraq has particularly impacted minority communities. Basitkey, Ismael, and Fizal all pointed to the plight of the Yazidi population which had been persecuted by ISIS and remains scattered with negligible access to basic civilian infrastructures and education. 

When discussing the current threat of ISIS resurgence, Shival Fazil claimed, “it is this growing disillusionment with politics and resentment toward the ruling elite that runs the risk of being exploited and weaponized by the Islamic State or other extremist groups.” 

This statement demonstrates the importance of addressing the concerns of the Iraqi youth and committing to political, economic, and social reform for both humanitarian and security reasons. Youth are also facing the repercussions of climate change, which will continue to be a serious threat to the country, both on livelihoods and security fronts. Hamzeh Hadad pointed to the inadequate preparedness of the country to combat climate change, arguing that “both Iraq and the international community must team up to create the appropriate infrastructures to cope with modern problems such as climate change.” 

Importance of education

One of the most pressing problems currently facing Iraqi youth is limited access and poor quality education. Each of the panelists spoke to this importance extensively. Nibras Basitkey claimed that “this phenomenon was worsened by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has disproportionately impacted minorities”. Additionally, Iraqi youth experience a significant setback in their education due to limited access to technology during the pandemic. Murad Ismael highlighted the importance of technology in improving education, claiming that “technological training in Iraq is extremely outdated and individuals who pursue higher education in technology in Iraq finish their degree with a high-school level understanding”. He offered that smartphones could be harnessed to improve education, but “there must be a campaign that compels individuals to maximize the educational value of their phones”. Basitkey further argued that “Iraq requires an updated curriculum that would focus on technology and skills that would optimize youth’s chances of obtaining jobs in the local market”. Additionally, “women’s access to education must be significantly improved”. 

The value of economic growth 

Iraq’s economy is highly dependent on oil and most jobs lie in the public sector-this is problematic for numerous reasons. Murad Ismael argued that “a prosperous private sector is essential to a functioning democracy in Iraq”, as the public cannot voice their political opinions freely if they are dependent on a particular political party for employment. Furthermore, oil prices are extremely unstable. Shivan Fazil highlighted the consequences of an oil-dependent economy and advocated for “the establishment of a competitive and reliable private sector”. Economic development is also a social issue. Basitkey argued for “the necessary inclusion of women in the Iraqi economy by challenging social norms and initiating campaigns that encourage women to participate in politics”. This will improve economic growth and mobilize a highly underutilized sector of the population. 

Each of these issues requires a tremendous commitment not only from Iraq but also from the international community. To ensure the success of Iraq’s bright youth population, these issues must be addressed, specifically, those of economic and educational concerns, concluded the panelists.

Britt Gronemeyer is a Young Global Professional with the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. 

The post Trajectories of Iraqi youth two decades after the 2003 invasion: Between aspirations and reality appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In politics and positions of power, the lack of equitable representation of women is striking. Women represent 49.7 percent of the world population, yet only twenty-seven countries have a female leader as of February 2023.2 Brazil, which elected its first and only woman president in 2011, has seen slow progress in ensuring greater female participation in politics. Political violence against women, among other factors, is a deterring factor for women’s political participation.

Political violence is not a new phenomenon, nor it is exclusive to women. However, evolving analysis has identified differences between political violence generally and political violence against women. The latter is directed at women with the intent of restricting their political participation and active voice, while also generalizing women’s participation as “wrong.” In the Brazilian context, political violence against women is a “physical, psychological, economic, symbolic, or sexual aggression against women, with the purpose of preventing or restricting access to and exercise of public functions and/or inducing them to make decisions contrary to their will.” As such, political violence against women plays an important role in deterring women’s active participation in politics—and even more daunting for black, indigenous, or LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer) women.

Brazil has a unique opportunity to adjust its legislation and reframe the incentives in the political sphere tackle this issue now, ahead of municipal elections in 2024. Doing so will ensure greater and more equitable political participation, enrich the political debate, strengthen the legislative agenda, and further solidify the country’s democratic ethos, even if other challenges to democracy remain. This report presents solutions Brazil could take to reach this more representative and resilient version of democracy.

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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The post An imperative for women’s political leadership: Lessons from Brazil appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship, led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative recently held a roadshow for its first cohort of Saudi women entrepreneurs. The February 26th to March 3rd 2023 Roadshow marked the culmination of a year-long fellowship aimed at helping entrepreneurs improve their leadership skills and scale their start-ups.

The roadshow included five outstanding Saudi women entrepreneurs:

• Meyce Alauddin, Founder and CEO, The Giveaway Co,
• Dr. Rawan Al-Kharboosh, Founder and CEO, AtPoint tx
• Renad Al-Jefri, CEO, Ad Astra
• Sumayah Alzamil, Co-Founder and CEO, Nugttah
• Sara Binladen, CTO, Quantum

The WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship was launched by the empowerME initiative of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs in March 2022 to support women entrepreneurs in building leadership and executive capacity and scaling their startups to new heights. The goals of the fellowship are to (1) accelerate the leadership and executive skills of women entrepreneurs and provide them with an unparalleled network of mentors, business executives, and policymakers, (2) expose US policymakers, scholars, and the business community to a unique and direct perspective on women’s opportunities and challenges in the select countries, and (3) develop a top-tier network of WIn fellows across the Middle East region who can support one another and be ambassadors for women’s economic participation. The unique collaboration between the Atlantic Council and Georgetown University delivers a year-long program that includes a tailored executive education program by Georgetown University, mentoring, and networking opportunities with leading US and MENA experts and business executives, and workshops with leading experts to advance government and business policies that increase women’s economic participation. The program includes a fully sponsored trip to the United States for selected participants for leadership training at Georgetown and meetings with US businesses and government leaders.

The inaugural program was launched in Saudi Arabia with support from US Embassy in Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS as well as the American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia’s Women in Business Committee, which served as the in-person event partner. The inaugural program included thirty Saudi women entrepreneurs and thirty five mentors from companies including Careem, Mastercard, Pepsi, Majid El Futtaim, Mumzworld, and Boeing, among others.

Meetings with U.S. Officials and Businesses Leaders in Washington, DC

The US trip for the five selected fellows includes numerous opportunities for them to learn new skills to grow their businesses. Their week began at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business in Washington DC attending Entrepreneurial Leadership courses where they connected with professors, venture capitalists, and other entrepreneurs.

After two intensive days, the fellows met with representatives from various US government agencies, think-tanks, corporate stakeholders, and other supporters of women’s entrepreneurship programs.

The five entrepreneurs visited the US Department of Commerce where they notably met with Camille Richardson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Middle East and Africa at the International Trade Administration to exchange ideas and discuss potential collaborations. Then they headed to the US Department of State where they met with US government officials. Their discussions with these representatives focused on the conditions of women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and how they could contribute to the country’s economy.   

Then they met with senior executives from UPS, one of the program sponsors, for a private luncheon that included  Saudi and US government officials. During this meeting, they discussed import-export conditions in Saudi Arabia and ways they could support women entrepreneurs. UPS also invited female entrepreneurs from Mexico to the gathering, which was a great opportunity for the fellows to compare notes, share details about their businesses, and explore ways of collaborating and supporting each other.

That evening, the fellows attended a dinner hosted by The National US Arab Chamber of Commerce which was attended by Saudi and US government officials, business executives, and several former US Ambassadors to Middle Eastern countries. During the dinner, the fellows had the opportunity to hear inspiring stories from the assembled business leaders.

Saudi Arabia’s New Economic Force: Women Entrepreneurs

On March 2nd, the Atlantic Council held a graduation ceremony for the five Fellows at its Washington, DC headquarters. The ceremony included several speakers from the US government, the Saudi government, and Georgetown University. The speakers affirmed the important role women in Saudi Arabia play in advancing the economy and in destigmatizing the perception of female entrepreneurship in the region.

During the graduation ceremony, the WIn Fellows shared inspiring stories about their journeys as female entrepreneurs, including how they overcame challenges and how their businesses are impacting their communities. They also highlighted the tremendous potential for women in the Middle East and North Africa and the critical role Saudi women are playing in developing new sectors in their country.

PepsiCo later hosted a dinner for the graduates where they discussed the business environment in Saudi Arabia and which included US and Saudi officials.

Last Stop: New York City

The final stop for the Fellows was New York City, where ABANA and MasterCard hosted a private lunch with the WIn fellows with senior finance and business. They then attended a meeting at Goldman Sachs headquarters with several of the firms leading women executives. They also met with the leaders of several programs supporting underrepresented founders and small-and-medium-sized businesses including 10,000 women, 10,000 Small Businesses, and Launch with GS.

Future Perspectives

Female entrepreneurs in the Middle East have made remarkable strides in recent years despite many socio-economic and cultural obstacles. They continue to drive innovation and economic growth. For instance, in the region, women lead a greater proportion of tech companies compared to Silicon Valley, with one out of every three companies having a female leader.

Their potential is significant, yet it remains underutilized due to several legal, financial, and social barriers. Supporting and promoting entrepreneurship among women can create more job opportunities, boost economies, and help reduce poverty. For instance, it is estimated that the MENA region is losing about $575 billion annually due to the legal and social obstacles women encounter when attempting to pursue economic opportunities.

Increasing female entrepreneurship leads to more inclusive, prosperous, and equal societies. To fully leverage the economic and social benefits of increased female entrepreneurship, policymakers must take steps to establish an enabling environment for them to prosper and grow. Programs like the WIn Fellowship are essential to help female entrepreneurs in the region overcome barriers to their success. As one of the Fellows, Meyce Alauddin of The Giveaway Co, said: “The fellowship helped and empowered me by giving me personal, entrepreneurship, and leadership tools that I didn’t have before.”

Amira Attia was a Program Assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Lynn Monzer is the Associate Director with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

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WIn Fellowship

The WIn Fellowship, a collaboration between the Atlantic Council and Georgetown University, delivers a fully sponsored year-long program that includes a tailored executive education program by Georgetown University, mentoring, and networking opportunities with leading US and MENA business executives, government officials, and policy experts, and workshops with leading experts to advance government and business policies that increase women’s economic participation.

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The post WIn Fellowship Roadshow Recap: a promising start for the inaugural fellows appeared first on Atlantic Council.

One of the principal institutions behind this systematic oppression of women is the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR), an unelected body answerable only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Indeed, it was the SCCR, under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that created the morality police in the first place. Months before Amini’s death, President Ebrahim Raisi, who was himself sanctioned by the United States in 2019 and who now heads the SCCR, ordered the morality police and government agencies across the country to enforce more strictly the compulsory hijab rules, a policy enacted and designed by the SCCR. Despite mounting evidence of abuses in the context of the protests, the SCCR reiterated its support for the compulsory hijab in January. That same month, a new secretary of the SCCR was appointed—one who personally used to fire a slingshot at women who he considered to be wearing their hijab improperly and, more recently, insisted that protesters should be shown “no mercy” and crucified.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to hold the SCCR accountable. It is an unelected body in a country that is beyond the reach of traditional accountability mechanisms such as international courts and routinely refuses to cooperate with specialized human rights mechanisms. The UN Human Rights Council recently established a fact-finding mission on Iran with a mandate to collect, consolidate, and analyze evidence of human rights violations stemming from the protests, but it does not have the power to initiate any legal proceedings itself. Given these limitations, sanctions—and specifically targeted sanctions—offer a way forward to address the ongoing gender persecution. 

Governments use targeted sanctions to freeze perpetrators’ assets and ban them from obtaining visas. They are primarily used as a tool to incentivize behavior changes under the theory that perpetrators will abandon the sanctionable activities in order to reclaim their assets and ability to travel. 

Targeted sanctions have been used since the 1990s. However, using them to target human rights violations and corruption first began in 2012 in response to the death of Russian whistleblower and tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Magnitsky was tortured and died in Russian prison after uncovering an instance of massive Russian corruption. After Magnitsky’s death, his client Bill Browder began advocating for justice on his behalf. While Browder could not find paths for criminal accountability in Russia or overseas, he recognized the link between corruption and human rights abuses, and he noted that many architects of both spent their ill-gotten gains in Western countries. Jurisdictions including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union (EU), and Australia adopted measures, often referred to as Magnitsky-style sanctions, to prevent perpetrators of these crimes from enjoying those luxuries—even if they were otherwise untouchable.

Ideally, the United States, likeminded countries, and regional blocs such as the EU will all designate both the SCCR and its members. While entities often do not have overseas assets and, naturally, cannot receive visas, their members often do have international connections. Designations on entities do not automatically result in designations on members, but the relevant legislation is often worded such that any members would additionally meet the criteria.

Iranian regime officials are known to have considerable overseas wealth, as well as international connections (such as immediate family members living overseas) that would suggest they would want to maintain the ability to spend money and obtain visas in those locations. The children of high-ranking officials, sometimes called “aghazadehs,” are frequently criticized for their luxurious lifestyles, even prompting a hit television series in Iran focused on them. Targeted sanctions would freeze all assets in the officials’ names and would, in general, prevent them from engaging with banking systems based in the sanctioning countries (for example, to send money to family members) or from obtaining a visa (for example, to visit family members). Especially in light of reports of mass resignations among certain regime officials and members of the security forces, sanctions might incentivize SCCR members to resign from government positions, at the least. 

Even if executed perfectly, targeted sanctions will not end gender persecution. Despite existing global sanctions (targeted and otherwise), the Iranian regime has not yet meaningfully changed its behavior. Designating an entity like the SCCR without known overseas assets and without designating individual members would have limited material effect. However, as recognized by the Netherlands, the symbolic value cannot be overlooked. The limited benefits are worth the effort—especially when it comes to gender-based crimes. First, it puts the SCCR’s members on notice that the international community is aware of their complicity and is paying attention. Second, it offers support to the victims of the SCCR’s policies—in this instance, women. Such support has been lacking in targeted sanctions to date, and groups such as Human Rights First have analyzed designations and found that in most instances jurisdictions did not recognize the gender of the victims, but when they did, they were more likely to identify men than women. 

The United States has designated hundreds of Iranian officials across more than a dozen Iran-focused sanctions regimes. So far, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the EU have imposed targeted sanctions on the morality police and on the security forces—but not yet on the SCCR. While the designations thus far have been a positive and welcome step to address the behaviors stemming from the SCCR’s policies, they fail to acknowledge the specific harms the SCCR has committed in building the architecture of Iran’s gender apartheid.

Experts from the Strategic Litigation Project have previously recommended that authorities designate the SCCR under relevant targeted sanctions regimes and have submitted supporting evidence and legal arguments. As important as designating human-rights-violating institutions such as the morality police has been, designating the SCCR is also critical for identifying and condemning the bodies responsible for facilitating the ongoing gender-related crimes and would add additional weight in support of their many victims. International Women’s Day offers an opportunity for countries and other jurisdictions with human rights sanctions regimes to designate those responsible for upholding regimes that discriminate against women and implement the policies designed to violate women’s rights—including the SCCR and its members.

Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. 

Lisandra Novo is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council.

The Strategic Litigation Project works on accountability efforts for atrocity crimes, human rights violations, and corruption offenses around the world.

The post Gender persecution is happening in Iran. Targeted sanctions would be a step toward accountability. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Inflation affects women by raising the prices of goods and services they consume. Global inflation climbed to nearly 9 percent in 2022, more than double the pre-pandemic worldwide average of 3.5 percent. Emerging and developing economies saw higher inflation, with some experiencing staggering rates of 25 percent or higher. Soaring food and fuel prices, in particular, have pushed more than seventy million people into poverty worldwide.

But the already-high prices of products that women often buy (the so-called “pink tax”) are rising even higher. For example, the consumer price index of beauty products in Mexico and France rose about 13 percent, while in South Korea, the index rose 10 percent. An inflation analysis in the United Kingdom showed that price hikes were higher on women’s shoes, blouses, socks, and other products than those aimed at men. Feminine-hygiene product prices have also soared worldwide, impacting generations of women.

At the same time, women are also deeply impacted by surging food, fuel, and fertilizer prices—driven up by Russia’s war in Ukraine—which are worsening food insecurity. As compared to men, women worldwide tend to do the majority of household shopping and therefore are confronted with the burden of choosing how to adapt weekly purchases. They also spend a larger share of their incomes on food than men, with even greater disparities shown across the Global South, meaning that inflation cuts deeply into their disposable income or ability to save.

Women also play a significant role in farming, agricultural production, and other activities across food systems; however, they have less access to resources such as land or transport, and the increased prices of fertilizer disincentivize its use, inhibiting yields and earnings. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, in 2021, 31.9 percent of women faced moderate or severe food insecurity compared to 27.6 percent of men. The disparity—4 percentage points—is expected to be even larger in 2022 due to inflation.

The widening gender pay gap is compounding inflation’s impacts. While there had been limited progress in some countries over the past decade, women’s wages generally remain lower than men’s, and inflation is putting any recent advances in gender parity at risk. Moreover, men are more likely to receive a raise at or over the inflation rate, as evidenced, for example, by a 2022 US survey that found that men are 33.3 percent more likely than women to see their salary keep pace with inflation. In low- and middle-income countries—where women often make up a larger share of lower-skill, lower-paying jobs, including in the informal sector—issues of wage disparity and stagnation are even more problematic.

Inflation further bears down on older women who, after leaving the workforce, face not only rising health care costs but also a significant pension gap—26 percent across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. In addition, the asset values and investment performances of their pensions are generally more at risk with high inflation. And of the people worldwide who are not receiving a regular formal pension, two-thirds are women.

Interest rates are rising in response to inflation, worsening a picture that is already bleak for women searching for loans to pay for their education, homes, or small businesses. Given the perceived risk of lending to them, women already tend to face higher interest rates and tighter credit markets. In the United States, for example, women pay more for mortgages in nearly every state. Because women in lower-income countries are generally less able than men to receive loans or credit from commercial banks, they utilize microfinance institutions which are generally more accessible to them but historically have higher rates. The rising debt crisis further threatens the ability of lower- and middle-income governments to provide relief or fiscal stimulus to their citizens, including those most vulnerable.

Womenomics 101

Inflation, the gender pay gap, and unequal access to loans all undermine economic recovery and inclusive growth, especially in the Global South. Womenomics—initially launched by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013 as a policy agenda to increase women’s labor-force participation and reduce pay disparity—recognizes that advancing women’s economic empowerment increases growth. But what does a Womenomics agenda for an inflationary era look like?

As a matter of practice, it should start with listening to women of diverse ages, identities, ethnicities, geographies, education levels, marital statuses, or socio-economic statuses to understand their lived experiences, aspirations, and constraints so that the most effective solutions can be created.

Here are some of the measures that can start to tackle gender gaps in wages, wealth, and well-being:

Tax and tariff reductions. These can be used to reduce the economic burden of shocks on women. In 2004, Kenya repealed its value added tax on pads and tampons; many countries and jurisdictions have followed suit, but more such policies are welcome and could prove a powerful counter-inflationary tool for hundreds of millions of women. (Even better would be making period products free altogether, like Scotland has.) On tariffs, a recent World Bank study of fifty-four developing countries found that, because women tend to spend a larger share of their income on food, a high-tariff good, eliminating import tariffs could allow female-headed households to gain 2.5 percent real income (adjusted for inflation) relative to male-headed ones.

Funds for emergencies. In the near term, governments, multilateral institutions, and development partners should allocate more resources and funding to emergency measures and social protections that can greatly impact women including food aid, cash transfers, and pensions. At the same time, governments, multilateral institutions, and development partners can shore up women’s economic resilience for the long term with investments and initiatives geared toward increasing their earnings, wealth, skills, savings, and financial security—and thus their abilities to withstand shocks when prices spike. In India, for example, one experiment found that when governments gave women COVID-19 workfare payments, those women were able to find and take on additional earning opportunities.

Lifting of capital constraints and support for counter-inflationary financial inclusion. Service providers and investors (in both the private and public sectors) can offer loan moratoria and debt restructuring, increase targeted and concessionary lending, and provide insurance or other agriculture, asset, and wealth protections for women. For example, the Australian government funds the Investing in Women program that uses blended finance, private-sector engagement, and other tools to promote women’s economic empowerment and equality across Southeast Asia. Service providers and investors could also extend the special programs they previously introduced to help people, farms, and firms weather COVID-19 economic shutdowns. For example, the South African government introduced its Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprise Debt Relief Scheme in 2020, prioritizing businesses owned by women, youth, and disabled people.

Improvements to women’s technological access. In the three policies above, leveraging digital tools is essential for expanding the reach, inclusivity, and scale of a gender-sensitive response to inflation and to advancing a Womenomics agenda more broadly. The United Nations acknowledged this importance by giving this year’s International Women’s Day the theme, “DigitALL: innovation and technology for gender equality.” Digital tools have great power in advancing a Womenomics agenda, for example by improving labor-market information systems or government technology services, or by facilitating safer blockchain or digital-currency payments and fintech services. Research from the International Monetary Fund found that fintech increases the number and ratio of female employees in the workforce and also mitigates the financial constraints that female-headed firms face.

Improvements in care infrastructure and availability. Childcare, eldercare, disability care, and the addition of such care facilities in the workplace can help pave the way for women’s economic participation and financial security. A recent study of publicly provided childcare in Brazil showed positive effects on the incomes and labor-market activity of caregivers, the majority of whom are women.

Above all, ensuring women with diverse experiences are at the table and playing a more meaningful role in economic and fiscal policy and decision-making—and implementation—is critical to closing the gender gaps in wages, wealth, and well-being.

Nicole Goldin is a nonresident senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center and global head of inclusive economic growth at Abt Associates, a consulting and research firm.

The post Inflation comes with a big gender gap. Here are five ways to narrow it. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukrainian parliamentarian Mariia Ionova believes the contributions being made by Ukraine’s women are worth sharing with international audiences. “It’s such an asset for our country, the success stories of women who have done so much to meet very urgent needs,” she says. Ionova highlights the efforts of Ukrainian women to fill crucial humanitarian gaps during the early stages of the war at a time when many of the largest international aid organizations were struggling.

Despite being underrepresented in both national and local government, Ukrainian women have emerged as prominent advocates of their country in the international arena. This is partly a result of martial law, which prevents most military age Ukrainian men from leaving the country. Ukrainian women face no such restrictions and have risen to the challenge of representing Ukraine around the world as unofficial ambassadors.

Prominent civil society activist and former Ukrainian MP Hanna Hopko is part of this new class of wartime ambassadors. In the weeks following the invasion, she launched the International Center for Ukrainian Victory in Warsaw. Over the past year, she has addressed policymakers and elected officials in 14 countries, including several separate trips to Washington.

Like many Ukrainian women active on the international stage, Hopko endures long periods of separation from her family and speaks of the emotional obligation to serve. “All women, mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters are fighting for our victory, freedom, and independence. We do it because we are full of love, but the sacrifices that come with this can be incredibly painful.”

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Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska in many ways epitomizes the enhanced international role being played by the country’s women. Before the war, Zelenska rarely courted publicity and generally shunned the limelight. However, with her husband committed to remaining in wartime Kyiv, she has taken to the global stage with increasing confidence and has proven a highly effective ambassador, not least when she chided business leaders and politicians during a recent appearance at the World Economic Forum in early 2023.

Zelenska’s international visits have given global audiences a more personal perspective on the horrors of the Russian invasion. During a summer 2022 address to members of the US Congress, she presented graphic images showing the aftermath of Russian airstrikes. While speaking before British MPs in Westminster, she revealed distressing details of Russian sexual violence against the civilian population in occupied regions of Ukraine. While always aware of her status as Ukraine’s First Lady, she has also been able to speak engagingly as a wife and as a mother.

Another prominent figure is Ukrainian human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk, who directs Kyiv’s Centre for Civil Liberties, which in 2022 became the first Ukrainian organization to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Matviichuk has used the higher profile that comes with being a Nobel Laureate to call on the international community to arm Ukraine and bring Russia to justice. “We cannot choose the country in which we are born or the period we live in, but we can always choose whether to be an active person and respond to challenges or to be passive and indifferent,” she says.

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The impact of Ukrainian women on the country’s war effort is nowhere more obvious than on the frontlines of the conflict. More than 50,000 women currently serve in the Ukrainian military, with many involved in combat operations.

Ukrainian MP Maryna Bardina, who co-chairs the parliamentary Equal Opportunity Caucus, which is dedicated to supporting gender equality in Ukrainian daily life, says one of their current priorities is making sure Ukrainian women serving in the military have everything they need including properly tailored uniforms. She notes that while record numbers of Ukrainian women are volunteering for military duty, they are also often confronted with mounting responsibilities on the home front.

“Ukrainian women are bearing a particularly heavy burden in this war,” comments fellow MP Mariia Ionova. “Women serving as soldiers are dying at the front. When their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons are killed, they are left to take care of the family, which often includes children and elderly relatives. When hospitals and schools are destroyed or forced to close as a result of war damage, they lose their jobs and also their prospects for the future.”

With no end in sight to the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in February 2022, Ukrainian women look set to face further stress and heartache in the coming months. Hopko tries to remain philosophical about the challenges that lie ahead. “We have no luxury to cry or to be weak,” she says. “We have to be strong because at stake is the future of our children and grandchildren; the future of our nation.”

Adrienne Ross is host of Democracy! The Podcast.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 28, 2023

Poland is leading Europe’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

By Diane Francis

Poland was the unsung hero of the recent landmark decision by Berlin and Washington to provide Ukraine with tanks as Polish leadership continues to shape the European response to Russia’s genocidal invasion.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

UkraineAlert Feb 20, 2023

‘You cannot outlast us’: Biden’s Kyiv visit sends strong message to Moscow

By Peter Dickinson

US President Joe Biden’s bold surprise visit to wartime Kyiv sent a strong message to Moscow that time is not on Putin’s side and Russia should not pin its hopes on a weakening of Western resolve to stand with Ukraine.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

UkraineAlert Feb 1, 2023

Europe’s last empire: Putin’s Ukraine war exposes Russia’s imperial identity

By Botakoz Kassymbekova

Vladimir Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine has exposed modern Russia’s unapologetically imperial identity but could yet lead to the collapse of the Kremlin’s broader imperial ambitions, writes Botakoz Kassymbekova.

Belarus Central Asia

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Ukraine’s women are playing a key role in the fight against Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This was the fourth in a series of four events for the first cohort of the WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship[SA1]  launched in Saudi Arabia led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS. The American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia’s Women in Business Committee is the program’s in-person event partner. The yearlong program, which is taking place from March 2022 – March 2023, enables more than thirty Saudi women entrepreneurs to enhance their networks, gain practical knowledge, and develop US-Saudi people-to-people and business ties that will help them scale their business locally, regionally, and globally.

The key points from the discussion are summarized below.

Learning how to accept failure as part of the learning process:

• Dalal Almutlaq reflected on the times she has failed and how to move forward from them, saying: “if you just reflect and learn from those mistakes, that’s how you grow. That pain you get from failure is what helps you become more resilient, it teaches you to surpass difficult times. It’s always difficult times that teach us and helps us how to grow. I don’t like the word failure…it’s just lessons learned.”
• Helen Al Uzaizi talked about learning to accept that failure will be a constant: “I think the minute we recognize that life happens and things happen that are beyond our control, absolutely [we need] accountability, but [we need to] recognize that life happens. Sometimes it might just be that life happened, not necessarily a failure…once you’ve failed as many times as I have, and many of us have, you start to realize that it’s all just part of life and the process.”

How to find the balance between taking bold risks and being reckless:

• Hela Cheikhrouhou explained how to mitigate risk: “You don’t take reckless risk as such, but you have to be willing to lose for the greater impact that you’re hoping to achieve and of course, it has to be relatively well structured to increase the chance of success, because with success comes impact. However, if it is a failure like others today have said in an inspiring manner; we learn from those lessons.”
• Thereshini Peter talked about how sharing the responsibility of risk-taking makes it less intimidating: “The biggest part – depending on how big or small the risk is – the environment is different in how you tackle that. If there is a large risk and high reward, the level of assessment goes very deep. I think the big part in a larger organization is that the shared responsibility meets certain areas. But also, there is deep accountability to make sure that we grow and learn from that.”
• Al Uzaizi spoke on the importance of risk when pursuing an entrepreneurial path: “One of the key entrepreneurial mindset characteristics is risk-taking. And I think without being a risk-taker you really cannot be an entrepreneur. You can be someone that has a side hustle, and that’s a wonderful thing. But really entrepreneurship is about risk-taking.”

The kind of culture that incentivizes teams to be more creative and risk-taking:

• Almutlaq described her passion for creating a work culture that promotes risk:“You can make a mistake as long as you’re held accountable for it, if you know how to come ask for help if you need help. That safe environment for the team is what is core for pushing creativity because you need that safety net for creativity.”
• Kelly Blackaby noted that mangers should focus on inspiring their team through several key points: “I think in terms of focusing on that team, it really is about the freedom to be creative…your flexibility [offering hybrid or remote schedules]…and your reward policy; making sure that people are really motivated to keep trying.”

Steps that can encourage women to take risks while having an entrepreneurial mindset:

• Blackaby stressed the importance that mentors can have on your career: “I think a lot of women do suffer from imposter syndrome and sometimes it’s really hard to believe in yourself, but I think if you can access that encouragement either from peers, managers, or from outside organizations, [they] can really support you to believe that you can do this.”
• Cheikhrouhou stated that a key way to encourage more women to have an entrepreneurial spirit is to accept failure as an option: “I come from a conservative family; you’re supposed to be perfect…mistakes are not well tolerated, and that’s the opposite of entrepreneurial behavior…yes you do your best but sometimes [the timing and market] are wrong”.

The most important advice to give to an aspiring entrepreneur:

• Almutlaq spoke about how not taking the first step of starting is a failure in itself: “We were taught that an ‘F’ is wrong and ‘you cannot fail in university or at your job’…you’ll never know if you’re failing or not unless you take that first step.”
• Al Uzaizi talked about the importance of teaching youth to reframe their mindsets about traditional work culture: “We don’t teach [children] failure, and we don’t teach them how to fail because you cannot. But what we do is reflect: what worked, what didn’t and what risk did you take? When you do that, you’re automatically reflecting and building that resilience to failure and risk.”

How attitudes towards entrepreneurs have shifted in recent years:

• Al Uzaizi reflects on how differently society views entrepreneurship since she started her company in 2016: “Last week I got an email from the Ministry of Education in the UAE about entrepreneurship innovation and that went out to all schools and we concluded a program with the Ministry of Economy, which was entrepreneurship. This was never the case a few years ago. This is a testament to how much people believe in the development of these skills because it is the future.”

The importance of anti-fragility in the workplace:

• Blackaby spoke about the importance of adapting the mindset of anti-fragility: “The concept of anti-fragility is to think about how you grow and flex with stress…it’s a concern because organizations that cannot adapt to that are going to swept by organizations that can…having flexible policies and procedures in place that help you to adapt.”

How large organizations can promote effective risk taking and learning from their mistakes:

• Peter speaks from her personal experience working at multiple large organizations: “It is extremely important [for large companies] to be able to covet and to allow themselves to actually change and take risk…the difference with large corporations and the change that they are doing, is that they do see that they need to stop being so bureaucratic and start being more flexible.”

Amira Attia is a Program Assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

The post Redefining the meaning of ‘failure’ in policies and culture to promote business risk appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Public Event Wed, February 8, 2023 • 8:00 am ET

Black trailblazers in foreign policy

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – A conversation examining the role of Blackness in foreign policy, evaluating the strides that Black change-makers have made, and determining what work is left to be done.

The days of the United States foreign service being staffed by people who mostly are “male, pale, and Yale” are history, two top US diplomats said Wednesday. As the State Department seeks to re-engage with the world, recruiting from diverse communities and retaining that talent for the long term are at the top of the agenda.

“Diversity includes everything, and the purpose is not simply to put another group at the top of the pyramid,” said Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s first ever chief diversity and inclusion officer, at an Atlantic Council Front Page event honoring Black trailblazers in foreign policy. “Visible diversity is necessary but insufficient,” she added, stressing the need to consider neurodiversity, background, and lived experience in recruitment.

Abercrombie-Winstanley was joined at the Atlantic Council by another trailblazing Black ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US representative to the United Nations (UN). A day after attending what she called an “electrifying” State of the Union address by US President Joe Biden, Thomas-Greenfield laid out her vision for how the foreign service can reach out to minority communities by fostering greater awareness of the possibility of a career in the State Department. 

“You try to be what you see,” Thomas-Greenfield said. For students at historically Black colleges and universities and at the high school level, she hopes that seeing alumni in the foreign service will inspire them to become diplomats.

Read on for more highlights from the special event honoring Black History Month.

Natural-born diplomats

• “I have often argued that we are not inherently better at the job, but that we are prepared. Because as women, as minorities in this country, we have always started in a position of not being in power,” Abercrombie-Winstanley told Rama Yade, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center (and a trailblazing Black diplomat in her own right in France). “We have to make friends. We have to be able to convince people to support our positions. Those basic qualities, frankly, make for better diplomacy.”

• Abercrombie-Winstanley noted the importance of having a diverse set of top-level officials to reflect the entire United States. “As people like Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, the Vice President [Kamala Harris], or Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin walk into rooms around the world, it should be a firm, gratifying reminder that America is a very diverse place.”

• She also reflected on how her position as Black foreign service officer during a thirty-year career that included a posting as US ambassador to Malta shifted her view of herself. “I feel more American when I am overseas. Here I am an African American; when I am overseas, I am American.”

Pushing for diversity in all corners

• As the first person to hold her position, Abercrombie-Winstanley faces a particularly daunting challenge of uncovering problems of racial inequality that have never been addressed before. “Many departments don’t always ask the questions that will turn up the bad news. We asked the questions, we got the information, and we share it because we want people to hold us accountable.”

• She noted that while lower and mid-level positions are often more diverse than they have been in the past, it’s a different story for senior-level posts. “Our workforce notices the extreme lack of diversity in our senior positions—whether it is parity or diversity—and that the process of getting to these positions is very opaque.” 

• “We are telling our leaders to make sure that you’re giving career-enhancing opportunities not just to people who remind you of yourself, but people who don’t remind you of yourself, who may bring something different to the table,” Abercrombie-Winstanley said.

• While she laid out the monetary and moral case for diversity and inclusion initiatives, Abercrombie-Winstanley compared her diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility reforms to taking action on cybersecurity: “We may not love it, but we do it. So I don’t mind what’s in your heart, what’s in your head—it’s what you do.”

“An obligation and duty to respond”

• Thomas-Greenfield told CNN anchor and senior political correspondent Abby Phillip that her decision to reenter the field of foreign service after retiring was due to her dismay at the Trump administration’s handling of foreign affairs. “As I sat on the sidelines watching our diminishing role and leadership, I felt we all had a responsibility to do whatever we could to help. I felt an obligation and duty to respond to that call.”

• With a background in African affairs, Thomas-Greenfield keeps the continent at the forefront of her efforts. “I have been on the African continent for thirty years. Africa is a core interest for the United States and its people, and Africa is the last frontier of possibilities.”

• Even as Chinese diplomatic engagement and economic investments grow on the continent, Thomas-Greenfield expressed confidence that Washington can outcompete Beijing in Africa. “We’re not competing with China. I would say the opposite: China is trying to compete with us,” she said. “We have a strong African diaspora. There’s no way that China can compete with those kinds of engagements that we have. We’re offering to our partners in Africa an alternative that focuses on human rights.”

• That advocacy could include an expanded role for Africa at the UN, which Thomas-Greenfield said is overdue for reform. “We now have 193 countries in the UN system. When the UN was created, there were only two independent African countries. Now we have fifty-plus. So we think the Security Council needs to be fit for purpose; it needs to be more inclusive,” she said. “It needs to take into account the changes that we have seen throughout the world. We have to bring this to some kind of end result that leads to a more inclusive United Nations Security Council.”

The problem of pigeonholing

• Thomas-Greenfield did not always dream of a diplomatic career. “I didn’t know the foreign service existed in high school,” she said. It was only upon taking her first trip to Africa—to Liberia—when she decided to join the foreign service. 

• Thomas-Greenfield said working in Africa was a delight, even though such postings were often a sign of discrimination for Black foreign service officers. “I know that our system did historically pigeonhole African Americans to Africa and occasionally to the Caribbean. And so there I was, an Africanist, loving to work on the continent and having to kind of justify that I wanted to stay in Africa and not go anywhere else.” 

• She noted that pigeonholing Black officers is much less of a problem than it used to be. For example, US Ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis is African American. When asked what advice she would tell her teenage self, Thomas-Greenfield kept it simple: “Dream big. If your dreams are not big enough to scare you, they’re not big enough.”

Nick Fouriezos is a writer with more than a decade of journalism experience around the globe.

The post <strong>A more diverse US State Department is taking on its ‘male, pale, and Yale’ legacy</strong> appeared first on Atlantic Council.

1. What’s the back story on this assassination plot?

This was an escalation from a previously disrupted Iranian government plot to kidnap the same journalist, Masih Alinejad. What makes this case different is that, thanks to the efforts of the FBI and foreign partners, all three plotters are now in custody.

—Thomas S. Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice and a former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

While not named in the indictment, the journalist in question is Alinejad, a fierce critic of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its discriminatory gender-based policies. The events in the indictment relate to events in July, which predate the tragic killing of Mahsa Jina Amini—a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who died in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s so-called “morality police” in September—which sparked nationwide protests in Iran that continue to this day. 

There can be no mistake that the efforts of the Islamic Republic to surveil, harass, kidnap, and even kill Iranian dissidents outside of Iran will have only accelerated in recent months, given the ferocity of the opposition to the regime and the critical role of advocates outside of Iran to convince governments to support a foreign policy that supports the Iranian people, not the Islamic Republic. Hacked emails circulating on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-controlled Telegram channels, videos of personal moments obtained through surveillance technology, and unwanted visits from hit men paid by the Islamic Republic are just some of the ways the Islamic Republic is seeking to intimidate and threaten those outside of Iran’s borders into submission and to quell the exercise of their freedom of speech, association, and assembly. Law enforcement around the world will be dealing with more and more requests to look into threats. Their ability to deal with the patterns inherent in this transnational repression will be key to the safety of regime opponents abroad.  

—Gissou Nia is the director of the Strategic Litigation Project and a human-rights attorney.

2. What does this plot say about Iran’s capabilities and ambition when it comes to targeting regime opponents overseas?

​​Tehran funnels resources to the IRGC for a strategy that relies on geographic unpredictability and plausible deniability for both deterrence and offense: You don’t know when or where we’ll hit you. And when we do, you can’t prove it was us. The unpredictability still works in their favor, but plausible deniability proved fully eroded in 2019 at the United Nations General Assembly when European countries for the first time held Iran accountable for attacks, that time on Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq. Since then, Western intelligence services beyond just the United States stepped up monitoring and collection and have foiled Tehran’s plots to strike abroad. However, the regime’s external strike ambition remains, and its strategy now seems to rely on luck and numbers: You may know when and where we wanted to hit you this time, but we just need to get lucky once to prove resilience.

—Kirsten Fontenrose is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former senior director for the Gulf on the US National Security Council.

As outrageous as this plot was, it is the latest in a long history of the current Iranian government’s willingness to commit murder on US soil. There was, for example, the 1979 murder of Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Bethesda, Maryland, and the 2011 plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States and others in a Washington restaurant.

—Thomas S. Warrick

3. How much of a threat is Iran to the US homeland, and what more can the United States do to stop it?

US administrations of both parties have understandably given top priority in recent years to radically different approaches to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian officials, the IRGC, and many state-owned and private businesses in Iran are under some of the world’s toughest economic sanctions, even though many of these sanctions are unilateral by the United States.

The fact that three individuals are now in custody for a plot to kill Alinejad is a welcome advancement. They will face justice. But today’s announcement also highlights that conventional thinking about deterrence—including even the occasional military reprisal, such as the 2020 strike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani—has failed to deter Iran from continuing to sponsor terrorist attacks on US soil. There are, however, other methods, including working closely with allies to isolate the Iranian regime, that have proven successful in changing Iranian behavior. Iran has vulnerabilities. The United States now needs to broaden its focus beyond just the nuclear program to build an alliance that can succeed in changing the behavior of the current Iranian government, even as Iran’s own citizens try to open up their society in ways that will end the need for arrests like the ones announced today.

—Thomas S. Warrick 

Iran bungled its attempt to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States at Café Milano in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood in 2011 and has not displayed the same ham-handedness in plots since. The United States nearly bungled its attempt to prevent that assassination and learned lessons about coordinating between intelligence services and processing gathered intelligence.

But since nothing in Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, cruise missile, or drone arsenals can reach the US homeland, Iran still relies on targeting individuals. Americans live and travel globally, so the globe is target-rich. The United States can’t round up all Americans into a homeland corral, so ways to reduce risk are to continue working with (and sometimes pressuring) other nations to make it tougher for Iranian operatives to travel outside of Iran, and to disincentivize these plots by revoking the visas that allow former plotters’ families to live safely in the West.  

—Kirsten Fontenrose

The post What will it take to deter Iran from targeting opponents inside the US? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

These thefts, as the New York Times recently reported, are not isolated episodes, but part of a wider and premediated effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to destroy the culture of Ukraine. This is an aspiration that Moscow has repeatedly tried and failed to fulfill over the past several centuries.  

“Women at War,” a new US exhibition featuring a variety of works by twelve female Ukrainian artists, is a symbol of defiance to the Kremlin’s latest attempt to expunge Ukraine’s heritage. Though a number of the artists featured in the exhibition have fled to Europe or America since the full-scale invasion began, all of the works on show were originally crafted in Ukraine itself.

Curated by Monika Fabijanska at the Fridman Gallery in New York, the exhibition demonstrates that, in contrast to Russian imperial dreams, a thriving and independent Ukrainian artistic tradition exists. Indeed, as Fabijanksa has observed, “[Ukrainian artists] have their own culture and dreams and, often, that dream is about independence and about an identity that is their own, without the threat of annexation, invasion, and annihilation.”  

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This exhibition has now traveled to the Stanford in Washington Gallery, where American Purpose, an intellectually engaging online magazine devoted to covering politics and culture, held a reception on January 12 welcoming its arrival. Opening remarks from several speakers including the historian Sonya Michel, who saw the exhibition in New York and helped bring it to Washington, testified to its ability to bring home the daily indignities, humiliations, and horrors of the war.  “Women at War” will remain at the Stanford in Washington campus until March 22.

The exhibition, which includes a seven-minute film by Oksana Chepelyk that is titled “Letter from Ukraine,” features various artworks ranging from cartoons of the hellishness of daily life in the Donbas to a superb life-size oil painting on canvas by Lesia Khomenko called “Max in the Army.” The solitary and solemn uniformed Max, himself an artist and the husband of Khomenko, is shown saluting and staring into the distance, offering a poignant reminder of the isolation that can accompany heading off to join the army. Was Khomenko saying farewell to him as much as he was to her?

Several drawings depict rape victims of Russian soldiers. Wrestling with such depravity could not have come easily. Dana Kavelina, who was born in 1995 in Melitopol and now lives in Germany as a refugee, took this challenging subject up in a series of searing drawings called “Communications. Exit to the Blind Spot.” She not only addresses the vile actions of Russian soldiers in Ukraine but also the “rape camps” established by the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s. The drawings are never less than harrowing. One, for example, features blood spooling from several women’s bodies and men depicted with red hands. These women, as the exhibition notes, were “purposefully destroyed by repeated rapes,” but Kavelina is searching for a way to bring “subjectivity” to these victims and to bear witness to their anguish. 

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Perhaps the most significant piece in the exhibition required the least overt artistry. A white linen sheet hangs at the entrance with a poem written on it in felt pen:

“May you choke on my soil.

May you poison yourself with my air.

May you drown in my waters.

May you burn in my sunlight.

May you stay restless all day and all night.

And may you be afraid every second.”

Olia Fedorova wrote these words while Russian forces besieged her home city Kharkiv in March 2022. Her text reflects the feelings of ordinary Ukrainians caught up in the horrors of Russia’s invasion. She captures the rage, helplessness, and flinty determination that outsiders can only begin to comprehend when they see the mass graves in Bucha, the hundreds of destroyed cars piled high outside Irpin, or the viral video of one girl’s birthday party in her bright yellow family kitchen just before it was destroyed by a Russian missile.   

The exhibition also shines in detailing the hardships of everyday life since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and establishment of puppet regimes in eastern Ukraine. In this regard, a series of 12 cartoon drawings by Aleutina Kakhidze is very instructive indeed. She vividly depicts the journey her elderly mother had to make to collect her paltry pension. We learn that it took her up to eleven-and-a-half hours to cross numerous military borders, with endless delays and no predictability. In the final picture, her mother’s heart gives out as she waits for her pension to be processed. While shocking, the outcome is all too common as senior citizens were often forced to stand in long lines.

The tone of the exhibition is not always grim. Consider the series of photographs by Yevgenia Belorutets entitled “Victories of the Defeated.” Her marvelously evocative four photographs introduce us to the ordinary beauty of daily life in post-industrial Ukraine in spite of all the hardships. Covered in coal soot and outfitted in large gloves and an ill-fitting jacket, one woman in a blue stocking cap stares knowingly at the camera while the female subjects in two others smile broadly and even laugh.

Far from cowering before Putin and his thugs, Ukrainians remain defiantly triumphant. As Zhanna Kadyrova explains in an accompanying note that she composed in March 2022, passivity in the face of terror is not an option. “For the first two weeks of the war, it seemed to me that art was a dream, that all twenty years of my professional life were just something I had seen while asleep, that art was absolutely powerless and ephemeral in comparison to the merciless military machine destroying peaceful cities and human lives. I no longer think so: I see that every artistic gesture makes us visible and makes our voices heard!” Yes, they do. Both the Stanford in Washington Gallery and American Purpose deserve plaudits for helping to ensure that the efforts of Ukrainian artists to thwart Russian tyranny attract the attention they so abundantly merit.

Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of the National Interest and Melinda Haring is the director of stakeholder relations and social impact at the Superhumans Center in Ukraine. Both Heilbrunn and Haring are non-resident senior fellows at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 26, 2022

Eight reasons for Ukrainian optimism in 2023

By Brian Mefford

Ukrainians have experienced an incredibly traumatic year but the country enters 2023 with reason for cautious optimism that Vladimir Putin’s criminal invasion can be decisively defeated, writes Brian Mefford.

European Union NATO

UkraineAlert Dec 25, 2022

Bakhmut: Fortress of freedom

By Andriy Yermak

Western support for Ukraine must remain strong in 2023 to prevent a Russian victory that would fuel a global authoritarian revival, warns the head of Ukraine’s Office of the President, Andriy Yermak.

Conflict European Union

UkraineAlert Dec 22, 2022

Russia’s defeat is the top global priority for 2023

By Oleksii Reznikov

Ensuring that the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends in defeat is vital for the international security system and must be the strategic priority for 2023, writes Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

Conflict European Union

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Resisting Russia one artwork at a time appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Incorporating the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in US security policy and strategy is both a moral and a strategic imperative,” noted Atlantic Council Board Director and Distinguished Fellow Franklin Kramer in introductory remarks at the event “Strategic blind spots? Advancing the Women, Peace, and Security agenda in US national security strategies,” held on December 19. Kramer said that responding to modern threats requires an integrated approach–one key element being the role gender plays in foreign and defense policy. If foreign and defense policy exclude gender perspectives, they threaten to exclude 50 percent of the world’s population. Such an omission does not bode well for the efficacy of those policies.

Sahana Dharmapuri, director of Our Secure Future, argued that the major strategic blind spot in the NSS is “the missing language about the importance of gender equality and particularly our commitment to the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.” The WPS agenda does not exist in a vacuum: By not including an overt commitment to it, the NSS does not allow those working on the issue of gender and security to tie it back to the strategic interests of the United States. Instead, WPS becomes a non-issue or a siloed activity.

Dharmapuri commented that while the NSS does talk about the protection of women and commits to double US development aid, it fails to talk about the agency of women and women in decision making as a strategic interest of the United States. This results in an incoherence in policy and US legislative commitments to those democratic values championed by the WPS agenda.

When considering strategies, Melanne Verveer, executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, and board director at the Atlantic Council, recalled four key pillars which provide agency for women: prevention, participation, transition, and protection.

Yet while protection is certainly important, Verneer pointed out that women also do not want to be seen as victims. “They[women] are leaders and they have a critical role to play, they represent half the population of the world, and they belong in this conversation, they belong in strategic decision making,” she said. “This isn’t just the right thing to do… but it is the smart thing to do if we really want to create a world of sustainable peace and security.”

Successful WPS implementation requires action on all four of those key pillars: Early incorporation of gender perspective acts as a preventative to conflict, enables women’s participation in meaningful ways, supports the transition from conflict to peace, and protects women from gender-based violence.

Verveer anecdotally detailed the challenges of integrating women’s perspectives into security during her time working with women in Afghanistan. The United States, in terms of grasping what Afghan women represented, was more marginal than central. “We did not fully ensure the meaningful participation of women in Afghanistan,” she said.

Though grassroots groundwork is critically important, meaningful participation must extend beyond that and into the strategic level. Kyleanne Hunter, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, added her perspective from her time serving in Afghanistan: “We allow women to participate when they participate in a way that fits the very patriarchal mold of what women should do.” For instance, she said, “women could participate in female engagement teams because we talk about going and taking your helmet off and having tea and having conversations and talking about being a mother.”

Experiences such as those of Hunter and Verveer highlight a disconnect between the WPS agenda and how it is implemented when it comes to hard security topics, noted Xanthe Scharff, moderator of the discussion, and co-founder and CEO of the Fuller Project.

Ultimately, the state of women, their status, and a nation’s well-being go hand-in-hand, which is essential as the United States seeks to renew its domestic sources of power in the strategic competition against the acute threat posed by Russia and the pacing challenge of China. “If you really wanted to understand the right security strategy, you can look at either the empowerment of women or the subjugation of women,” Verveer said. “Because in that polarity, you will know what’s happening in a country.”

Watch the full event

Online Event Mon, December 19, 2022 • 10:00 am ET

Strategic blind spots? Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in US national security strategies

The role of gender in foreign and defense policy is a key element missing from the recently released NSS and NDS. How can integrating a gender perspective in US national security strategies help the United States and its allies and partners transform collective security?

Security & Defense Women

Kimberly Talley is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, part of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The post Integrating women’s agency in strategic planning: the missing element of power from US national security strategies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This was the third in a series of four events for the first cohort of the WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship launched in Saudi Arabia. The fellowship is led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business with support from US Embassy Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS. The American Chamber of Commerce Saudi Arabia’s Women in Business Committee is the program’s in-person event partner. The yearlong program from March 2022 – March 2023 enables over thirty Saudi women entrepreneurs to enhance their networks, gain practical knowledge, and develop US-Saudi people-to-people and business ties that will help them scale their business locally, regionally, and globally.

The key points from the discussion are summarized below.

Major changes in Saudi Arabia impacting women in recent years:

• Jamila El-Dajani highlighted the changes in Saudi Arabia that allowed women to gain freedom and independence while providing new opportunities for them in terms of employment, entrepreneurship, and business leadership. She shared one example: “The kingdom just announced seven hundred new licenses for women lawyers, bringing the total to 2,000, which is a rapid shift from a decade ago.”
• Mae Saleh Almozaini highlighted women’s freedom of mobility since they’ve been permitted to drive. She noted that women’s participation in the workforce in Saudi Arabia increased from “17 percent to 36 percent,” underscoring their increased ability to make contributions to the economy over the past five years. 

Areas where change to support women’s inclusion in workplaces is needed: 

• Zina Janabi emphasized the necessity of transformational change at organizational and individual levels for women in the workplace. She highlighted the dual approach that some organizations are using to create a culture where women can thrive while providing policies and programs that allow them to move up the workforce ladder. Furthermore, Janabi explained on a personal level that it’s essential for women or any minority to support one another when experiencing barriers in their careers. 
• Bara’a Al-Khateeb said, “I don’t think what women face in terms of challenges in KSA [Saudi Arabia] is far different than what women face globally.” She added that women worldwide sometimes encounter unhelpful stereotypes. She noted that studies show that when companies promote employees to a leadership position, women are considered 15 percent less than men for these promotions due to stereotypes. Al-Khateeb contended that women have underrated social intelligence, which is a vital skill for leaders. She added that women are also often paid up to 35 percent less than males. 
• Hanaa Almoaibed highlighted that the dual burden for working mothers increased due to the pandemic’s various challenges while stating that Arab societies lack a culture of professional childcare, such as nannies. She stressed the need for women to create “better care facilities” that will provide a vital support system for working mothers.
• Al-Khateeb stressed the lack of opportunities for leadership, mentorship, and coaching for women. She added that women wish to pursue leadership roles; however, these challenges and the cultural barriers can make women’s full participation or rise to a leadership role much more difficult.
• Almoaibed stressed the need to train teachers to help students with practical 21st-century skills in schools and essentialize extracurricular activity. She suggested institutionalizing structured career guidance in schools for every student in the kingdom from an early age to build proper research and negotiation skills that will link with “realistic job training” for them in the future.
• Almozaini addressed a major concern in Arab societies: raising women to be shy and reserved, which can affect their confidence in the future. Women need to become more assertive and outspoken, Mae emphasized, adding the importance of providing a mentorship program for women to be guided throughout their career path. 
• Al-Khateeb highlighted that while adding female workers rewards companies with the flexibility of hiring employees from various nationalities, women’s presence has positively impacted dollar value and increased team collaboration. She encouraged people to raise awareness of women’s effectiveness in leadership roles and business.

Opportunities for women entrepreneurs and startups in Saudi Arabia:

• Almoaibed explained that more and more people in Saudi Arabia are starting companies; however, she pointed out that “risk is still the most significant barrier to going into an entrepreneurial adventure” and “seventy percent of people who consider forming a private business back out because they fear the project’s failure.” 
• Al-Khateeb emphasized the importance of flexibility to women; she noted that startup companies sometimes have more agility and willingness to do this. She stressed that providing employees with flexibility will help more women take on leadership roles. She shared her personal story, explaining that during her hiring interview at Foodics, the male interviewers asked what would make the role more attractive for her, and she requested to work remotely because she was pregnant with her third child. She wasn’t expecting them to agree, but they told her she would be Foodics’ first remote employee. Their willingness to provide flexibility had a significant impact on her as a working mother.
• Al-Khateeb also shared her insight as a recruiter, highlighting that women are applying to a wide range of positions in Saudi Arabia, despite the challenges that come with these roles such as traveling requirements or working long hours.
• Almozaini highlighted that the G20, which was hosted in Saudi Arabia two years ago, reported that investing in targeted training for Saudi women will generate $400 billion in return on investments to the country’s GDP by 2030. Therefore, promoting women’s inclusion in the workforce is a business necessity, not just a moral imperative.

Nour Alhajjeh is a Young Global Professional with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East & Middle East Programs. 

The post Societal norms in Saudi Arabia clearing the way for more women to start and lead businesses appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Given that, the United States and its global partners should double down in 2023 to shape the contest unfolding between democrats and despots that will define the post-Cold War order. US President Joe Biden has consistently focused on this competition as a historic “inflection point.” His third year in office provides him his best opportunity yet to score lasting gains in that contest.

At the beginning of this year, autocracy seemed to be on the march. Putin and Xi in early February 2022, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, entered a “no limits” strategic partnership. That was followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But since then, in all three cases—Russia, China, and Iran—autocratic leaders’ errors of commission have deepened their countries’ underlying weaknesses while breeding new difficulties that defy easy solutions. 

That’s most dramatically the case with Putin, whose reckless, unprovoked, and illegal war in Ukraine has resulted in 6,490 civilian deaths, per the United Nations’s most recent estimate, and has prompted more than a million Russians to flee his country. International observers point to proof of crimes against humanity.

Beyond that, Putin has set back the Russian economy—some experts believe by as much as a decade—and sanctions are only beginning to bite. He’ll never regain his international reputation, and his military has revealed itself—despite many years of investments—as poorly trained, badly disciplined, and lacking morale.

Xi’s mistakes are less bloody in nature thus far. The excesses of his zero-COVID policy set off large-scale, spontaneous protests that amounted to the most serious challenge of his decade in leadership. Just last month, the Twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party anointed Xi with a third term as China’s leader, but the protests that followed shortly thereafter shattered that aura of invincibility and apparent public support. 

“Xi is in a crisis of his own making, with no quick or painless route out,” wrote the Economist this week. “New COVID cases are near record levels. The disease has spread to more than 85 percent of China’s cities. Clamp down even harder to bring it back under control, and the economic costs will rise yet higher, further fueling public anger. Allow it to spread and hundreds of thousands of people will die… China’s leaders appear to be searching for a middle ground, but it is not clear there is any.” 

Beyond COVID-19, what is in danger is the unwritten social contract between the Chinese Communist Party of just 96 million members and the total Chinese population of 1.4 billion. Namely, the Chinese people accept restricted freedoms and fealty to the party so long as the party provides economic rewards and social security. A series of policy mistakes has slowed Chinese growth to just 3 percent in 2022, yet Xi continues to prioritize party control over economic freedoms. 

Though the global stakes of Iran’s protests are less obvious, the Mideast and world would be far better off with a more moderate and pluralistic Iran that focuses on its public needs, retreats from its regional adventurism, and steps back from the nuclear brink. Here, too, the regime’s problems have been self-created, the protests being a result of excessive regime brutality and endemic corruption. 

So, what should be done in 2023 to transform these authoritarian setbacks into a more sustainable advance of the “free world” (helping to reverse a sixteen-year global decline of democracy, as measured by Freedom House’s 2022 report)?

First and most immediately, the United States and its partners should deepen and expand their military and financial support for Ukraine. The Biden administration’s top officials understand this is the defining battle of our post-Cold War era. Without US military and financial support, and without US rallying of allies, all of Kyiv’s remarkable courage and resilience might not be enough.

That said, Biden’s caution and his often-stated fears of setting off World War III have limited the sorts and amounts of armaments Ukraine receives—and the speed at which they reach the battlefield. Faster delivery of more and better air defense could have saved Ukrainian lives. 

It’s remains difficult to understand continued limits put on Ukraine’s ability to strike the targets from which they are being hit as Putin murderously pummels more civilian targets and infrastructure. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has rightly accused Putin of weaponizing winter in the hope of freezing Ukraine’s citizens into submission. Perhaps the greater danger is that of Western fatigue in supporting Ukraine and growing external pressure on Kyiv to negotiate, when only further battlefield gains will prompt Putin to withdraw his troops and provide concessions that would allow a secure, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine to emerge.

Even as Russia requires action now, managing the Chinese challenge requires a more patient course, one that will be made easier should Putin be strategically defeated in Ukraine. Biden was right to meet with Xi in Bali, on the margins of the Group of Twenty meeting, to build a floor which can keep the world’s most crucial bilateral relationship from sinking.

Where the United States should step up its efforts in 2023 is in coalescing allies in Europe and Asia around a sustainable, consensus-driven approach to China that recognizes Beijing’s underlying weaknesses and deters its efforts to absorb Taiwan and remake the global order.

There are three potential outcomes at this “inflection point”: a reinvigoration and reinvention of our existing international liberal order, the emergence of a Chinese-led illiberal order, or the breakdown of world order altogether on the model of Putin’s “rule of the jungle.”

As 2022 ends, the failures and costs of those alternative models are clearer than ever.

Therefore, what’s crucial in the year ahead is for democracies to unify in common cause to shape the global future alongside moderate, modern non-democracies that seek a more secure, prosperous, and just world.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 China’s failing COVID strategy leaves Xi with no good options
ECONOMIST

To understand Xi’s dilemma, read this smart Economist essay breaking down the consequences China will face if it abandons Xi’s “zero-COVID” policy—and the consequences it will face if it doesn’t.

One jarring image of Xi’s determination to go all-in on “zero-COVID” is an empty vaccine factory. “The stifling of debate,” the Economist writes, “has had baleful consequences. China has not approved the use of foreign vaccines, including the most effective ones, the mRNA jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”

What experience shows is “the protection accorded by Chinese shots appears to wane significantly after six months. Worse, the authorities have focused on testing and building quarantine sites this year, while failing to administer third (or even fourth) doses to all, even though these would require no new infrastructure or political messaging.”  Read More →

#2 Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths.
Fareed Zakaria | WASHINGTON POST

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, one of the premier strategic thinkers out there, has written a compelling defense of democracy’s virtues in the face of authoritarianism’s setbacks.

“It is astonishing to remember that when America’s Founding Fathers were constructing their experiment in government,” Zakaria writes, “they were virtually alone in a world of monarchies. These politicians were drawing on the writings of Enlightenment intellectuals such as Montesquieu and John Locke, studying historical examples from ancient Greece and Rome, and embracing key elements of English governance and common law. But they were mostly making it up in their heads. They had failures; their first effort, the Articles of Confederation, collapsed. In the end, however, they concocted something stunning: a system that protected individual rights, allowed for regular changes in leadership, prevented religious hegemony, and created a structure flexible enough to adapt to massive changes.”  Read More →

#3 Kevin Rudd on Jiang Zemin, steward of China’s rise

Kevin Rudd | INTERPRETER

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the keenest observers of China anywhere, has delivered a brilliant obituary on former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin that provides insight into China’s reformist past and puts in perspective its unfortunate return to Marxism-Leninism under Xi.

His narrative recalls his own experience of Jiang, then mayor of Shanghai, singing O Sole Mio at the Sydney Opera House in 1987. It then tracks how this larger-than-life individual navigated the shoals of Communist Party politics to usher in China’s era of rapid economic growth and private sector expansion. 

“Jiang’s death this week at 96,” writes Rudd in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, “marks the final, flickering embers of that now-distant reformist age—and the unambiguous beginning of the brave, new world of Xi Jinping.” Read More →

#4 The Russian Billionaire Selling Putin’s War to the Public
Betsy McKay, Thomas Grove, and Rob Barry | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This WSJ investigation is a powerfully reported exposé of Yuri Kovalchuk, also known as “Putin’s banker,” an oligarch and media baron, who has used his banking and media empires to promote Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine.

“A physicist by training,” three WSJ reporters write, “Kovalchuk is motivated more by patriotic ideology than by the trappings of wealth, say people who know him. He doesn’t hold a formal position in the Russian government. Yet he has deep influence over Kremlin policy and personnel, and helps supply dachas and yachts for Putin’s use, and lucrative jobs and stockholdings to the president’s family and friends, according to people familiar with the deals, financial documents and anticorruption groups.”

“Kovalchuk,” the WSJ adds, “controls the US-sanctioned Russian Bank Rossiya. The bank, in turn, built a network of offshore companies that have benefited Putin and his associates, and invests in projects important to the state, according to interviews with former US officials and Kremlin analysts as well as public documents and information revealed in the Panama Papers, a trove of leaked documents detailing offshore financial holdings.” Read More →

#5 Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials
Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and Yeganeh Torbati  | WASHINGTON POST

This week’s must-read is chilling. In a remarkable narrative, the Washington Post pieces together a large-scale Iranian campaign of kidnapping, intimidation, and assassination against critics and opponents, which has escalated in recent years.

One heartbreaking case is that of the Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was lured to Iraq where he was arrested and turned over to Iranian authorities. “The IRGC,” the Post writes, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for ‘corruption on Earth.’ He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.”

“Another chilling example is of a failed Iranian plot to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an American citizen. “The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran,” the Washington Post authors write. “Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was ‘mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.

“The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, ‘a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,’ the Justice Department said in a statement.” Read More →

Atlantic Council top reads

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Nov 30, 2022

Preparing for victory: A long-haul strategy to help Ukraine win the war against Russia—and secure the peace

By Stephen J. Hadley, William Taylor, John E. Herbst, Matthew Kroenig, Melinda Haring, and Jeffrey Cimmino

Ukraine’s counteroffensives, backed by expanded and accelerated US and allied support, continue to push Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory, although at a reduced rate. These hard-won successes, however, bring with them possible challenges that also must be addressed. 

Europe & Eurasia Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Dec 2, 2022

What to expect from the new Russian oil price cap

By Reed Blakemore, Charles Lichfield, Brian O’Toole

As the EU comes to an agreement on a $60 price cap, here’s how it will work—and what impacts the world will see on the global and Russian economy.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

TURKEYSource Dec 1, 2022

The risks and rewards of Erdogan’s next military operation

By Rich Outzen

The November 13 bombing in Istanbul, blamed on the PKK, is spurring a planned Turkish offensive against PKK affiliates in Northern Syria, fulfilling a long term goal to better secure the country’s southern border.

Conflict Iraq

The post Autocratic setbacks offer Biden his ‘inflection point’ for democracies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Samad in American Council on Women, Peace, and Security: Women, peace and security and the US continued role in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The 30 signatories of the retracted letter are the latest in a series of high-profile figures to voice their support for some kind of negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine. In recent weeks, similar appeals have come from diverse sources ranging from geopolitical commentators and media pundits to Elon Musk and Pope Francis. These peace proposals have been widely condemned as misguided and ill-timed, with critics arguing that any attempt to impose a ceasefire at the current stage of the war would only reward Putin and pave the way for further Russian aggression in the years to come.

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It is not hard to see why skeptics question the timing of recent ceasefire initiatives. Russia currently occupies around 20% of Ukraine but is losing ground on multiple fronts. In a series of counteroffensives that began in late August, the Ukrainian military has succeeded in liberating much of northeastern Ukraine while also reducing Russia’s foothold on the right bank of the Dnipro River in the south of the country. A prolonged pause in hostilities would rob the Ukrainian army of the military momentum it currently enjoys while enabling Putin to rescue his rapidly unraveling invasion.

Crucially, a ceasefire would freeze the conflict and provide Russia with vital breathing space to rearm and regroup. Putin’s army suffered catastrophic losses during the first eight months of the invasion, with tens of thousands of Russian soldiers killed and more than a thousand tanks captured or destroyed. His military now needs time to train and equip new units of troops made up of freshly mobilized Russians.

Nor is there any indication that Russia is genuinely interested in ending the war. On the contrary, Putin has recently adopted a series of escalatory measures including Russia’s first mobilization since World War II and the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia). He has also introduced elements of martial law in some Russian regions and moved to put the entire Russian economy on a war footing. These steps leave little room for doubt that the Russian dictator is preparing for a long war and has yet to abandon his original goal of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood.

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The most obvious problem with recent proposals to freeze the conflict is the fact that a ceasefire would leave one-fifth of Ukraine under Kremlin control and condemn millions of Ukrainians to a bleak and uncertain future under indefinite Russian occupation. United Nations investigators have already confirmed that Russia is guilty of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Many observers believe the ultimate objective of the invasion is the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

Alleged Russian war crimes include the mass execution of civilians and the bombing of schools, hospitals, and residential buildings. Entire cities in the east of the country have been reduced to ruins by Russian airstrikes and artillery. In areas controlled by Moscow, Ukrainian civilians have been subjected to abductions, torture, and forced deportations. Meanwhile, the occupation authorities have set about eradicating all symbols of Ukrainian statehood and national identity.

As Ukrainian forces have liberated towns and villages across southern and eastern Ukraine, they have discovered mass graves and torture chambers with sickening regularity. Accounts of sexual violence are equally widespread. Some Ukrainian civilians have simply disappeared without trace. The many strikingly similar accounts of life under Russian occupation in different regions of Ukraine suggest that Russian war crimes against the civilian population are not isolated excesses; on the contrary, they form a core part of the Kremlin’s military strategy for the complete subjugation of Ukraine.

No Ukrainian leader could legitimately abandon millions of fellow civilians to such a fate. Unsurprisingly, President Zelenskyy has ruled out any negotiations with Putin and stated that Ukraine will instead seek to liberate the entire country from Russian occupation. International efforts to pressure Kyiv into a compromise peace will not change Zelenskyy’s mind or convince the vast majority of Ukrainians that they are being unreasonable. For them, it is a matter of life and death. Either Putin is defeated or their nation will cease to exist.

Beyond the immediate issue of protecting Ukrainian civilians from Russian war crimes, opponents of a ceasefire also note that anything short of defeat in Ukraine will set the stage for further Kremlin wars of aggression. Putin has paid a high price for his decision to invade Ukraine, but if he is able to secure Russian control over the areas currently under occupation, he will regard the sacrifices of the past eight months as worthwhile. It will only be a matter of time before Ukraine faces a new Russian invasion.

Almost all wars ultimately end at the negotiating table. However, it is vital for global security that any future peace talks with Russia take place on Ukraine’s terms. That can only happen if Putin’s invasion ends in decisive defeat. Until then, there should be no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine.

Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He can be found on Twitter @MTemnycky.

Further reading

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post A ceasefire would condemn millions of Ukrainians to Russian occupation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The slogan is a famous one among Iranian demonstrators in recent years. Afghan women’s heroic resistance to the Taliban’s brutal oppression and gender apartheid later produced additional slogans, especially the guiding one “bread, work, and freedom,” which was inspired by recent civic movements across the wider region. Only days after the Herat protest, Iranian women’s rights activists joined a demonstration outside the Pakistani Embassy in Tehran in solidarity with Afghans. As in Herat, the demonstration in Tehran was also dispersed.

The latest women-centric nationwide protests in Iran were triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s notorious “morality police.” As such, the demonstrations have given rise to another guiding slogan in Iran: “women, life, and freedom.” The similarities between these slogans reflect the shared character and struggle faced by Afghan and Iranian women, both consistently denied their basic human rights by governments but also by social norms. However, this connection runs deeper than the present protests: prior to the rise of nation-states Iran and Afghanistan in the early twentieth century, the two countries belonged to the same civilizational space, known as the Iranian plateau. Women’s rights and freedoms fluctuated massively between different eras, with the end result being the system of gender apartheid that we see today.

Iran and Afghanistan continue to face similar and often shared challenges, including a now century-old and counting struggle for independence and constitutional polity against colonial Western and Russian empires in addition to Islamist and clerical oppression at home. 

Prior to repressive policies by the clerical class, women were prominent in Persian society

Iranian civilization can be termed an “aesthetic” world, which contemporary gender sensitive minds would characterize as feminine. “Iran” is used to name girls among locals as well as the “sun,” which has a central presence in Iranian mythology and iconography. The epicentre of medieval Iran—known as the Khorasan and comprising the eastern portion of modern Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia—literally translates to “the land of the sun.” The Persian language is among few which is gender neutral. Prior to the bloody imposition of Islam’s discriminatory provisions and tribal practices by the invading Arabs, there was an entirely different socio-political system, including the place and status of women in pre-Islamic Iran. The goddess Mitra was the founding figure of the ancient religions of Iran. There were also prominent women warriors and stateswomen both before and after Islam’s arrival. In 480 BC, Persian Naval Chief Commander Artemisia I of Caria led successful battles against the Greeks. Queen Gawharshad Begum helped to elevate Herat, then the capital of the warring Timurid dynasty, into a thriving cosmopolitan hub dubbed the “Florence of the East” in the fifteenth century. 

Moving forward to the twentieth century—when women’s rights became a central and contested discourse in both countries—Reza Shah of Iran and Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan joined their Turkic counterpart, Ataturk, in modernizing their respective societal and political systems. Though neither were faultless, the emancipation of women was nonetheless prioritized, including opening girls-only schools, sending female students to Europe for further education, and relaxing female dress codes. These social and political reforms prompted strong resistance and backlash from conservative and clerical constituencies that felt threatened, something exacerbated by excessive and incompetent implemention of these reforms. 

The clerical class subsequently became the leading opponent to emancipation of women and women’s rights. They justified their attack as defending the honor, identity, and religious principles of their countries against invading European colonization and aggression. In other words, anti-colonization rhetoric was used to attack emancipatory values of modernity, such as the equality of men and women. Later on, Islamist parties continued to attack women progress as another example of the westernization of Muslim societies.

The West became involved because of geopolitical interests, not to support Afghan and Iranian women

Contrary to the clerical or Islamist accusation that promotion of women’s rights is nothing more than a Western imposition, Western and Russian political powers were principally pursuing their geopolitical and economic interests with little eye to human rights in their colonies. As an example, Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and King Amanullah Khan of Afghanistan were fiercely opposed by British colonial powers as well as the clergies who orchestrated their eventual toppling from the throne despite their modernizing policies. 

There is thus an unwritten agreement and practical collaboration between Western colonial powers and clerical or Islamist power centers against progressive and constitutional movements in the Islamic world, especially in Iran and Afghanistan. 

In Iran, while it is widely acknowledged that nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was toppled in a coup orchestrated by the intelligence services of the United Kingdom and United States in 1953, the Western role in Iran’s Islamic revolution is hotly disputed. Mohammad Reza Shah blamed Western powers for enabling Ayatollah Khomeini’s spectacular ascendancy. Recent declassification of secret documents in the United States somewhat corroborated such a charge. Shah’s early mistakes and Khomenini’s charisma and political skill were additional factors. 

Similarly, in Afghanistan, Western support to the mujahideen in the 1980s is universally acknowledged. The precedent set by those events resurfaced, however, when the February 2020 peace agreement between the Taliban and the United States effectively handed over Afghanistan’s nascent republican polity to the Taliban’s totalitarian Islamist reign. Despite ensuing symbolic gestures by Western powers such as the US Department of State’s “Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Resilience”—intended to show commitment to Afghan women—their clear abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban has dulled the shine of Western rhetoric about women’s rights. US President Joseph R. Biden’s approach to Afghanistan resembles former US President Jimmy E. Carter’s handling of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, including his naïve optimism and sheer incompetency in managing the mullahs of Afghanistan and Iran. 

In short, Western powers will support in whichever power center suits their interests in a given moment. The repressive forces seeking to maintain gender apartheid in the region are thus only relevant insofar as they fit (or do not fit) into that broader picture, not because of values.

The Afghan republic’s collapse is mourned among Iran’s large—but suppressed—democratic constituencies

Unlike the celebration of the Taliban’s victory among Islamist constituencies across the Islamic world and the nationalist (disguised as liberal) circle in Pakistan, Iran’s large but suppressed democratic constituencies have been mourning the political loss of their democratic Afghan cousins, who were not only key allies but also a source of inspiration. 

The ongoing women-centric civic resistance to clerical oppression on the streets of Afghan and Iranian cities and university campuses—building on the shared history and struggle of women in the Iranian plateau—has given rise to the term “Af-Irn” hopes of emancipation of the citizens of both countries. Af-Irn is a civilizational movement that challenges both Islamist dystopia and Western hypocrisy. It is multifaceted in nature, with serious implications for the two countries and beyond.

Iran and Afghanistan have suffered from a similar phenomenon, being sucked into their peripheral regions. Afghanistan’s entanglement in South Asia’s sub-continental geopolitics and Iran’s interference in Arab affairs pulled both away from their overlapping civilizational core. Though the post-revolutionary regime in Iran dragged it into the Arab-Israeli conflict, this interference has been faced with both Arab resistance and disapproval among the Iranian public. The slogan of “neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, I give my life to Iran” is popular among Iranian demonstrators, something mirrored by recent protests in Iraq against Iran’s interference in Iraqi politics. On the other hand, the slogan of “down with the Taliban, either in Tehran or Kabul” is interchangeably used in both countries.

A shared history and a shared future

The two dynamics of Af-Pak and Af-Irn will continue to shape Afghanistan’s ongoing transition from its present tragic situation towards either “Talibanistan” or “Khorasan.” Its outcome is far from determined as each is endowed with powerful allies and forces, including the situation in Iran. 

The brave women protestors clad in historically significant black clothing have deep and shared historical inspirations and precedents. The first successful Khorasani rebellion against cultural or political imperialism was called the “Movement of the Black Raiment” led by Abu Muslim al-Khorasani in 755 AD. Khorasani toppled the Umayyad Caliphate, an Arab empire ruling discriminately upon its non-Arab subjects, principally the Iranians. 

The coming months will show if there is to be another “Female Black Raiment” in the history books.

Dr. Davood Moradian is director-general of the Afghan Institute of Strategic Studies (AISS).

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

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The post The lionesses of Kabul & Tehran in Khorasan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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Neutralizing even one of these crises can be confounding and perilous. Some countries, unfortunately, face them all at once, fighting on multiple fronts. That usually keeps them from attending to the longer-term task of giving people the knowledge, skills, access to health care, and opportunities they need to live out their full productive potential. Investing in resilient, shock-responsive systems is critical to protect human-capital gains and improve resilience to future shocks.

Niger is an example of a country that faces many complex and interconnected challenges. Shocks and crises are increasingly frequent and overlapping in Niger, disrupting efforts to sustain broad-based growth, build human capital, and reduce poverty. Regional instability has led to the displacement of families and the closure of schools, threatening social stability and increasing insecurity; that, in turn, complicated Niger’s efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and worsened the food insecurity that is now affecting more than 4.4 million of the country’s people. Climate shocks have triggered localized flooding, while steady rises in temperatures threaten the more than 80 percent of Niger’s citizens who depend on agriculture for their nourishment and livelihoods.

The government of Niger is determined not to lose any ground in its steady climb to protect and invest in all its citizens by pressing ahead with programs and reforms that are having transformational impact on people’s lives. A great example of this is the Wadata Talaka safety-net program, a partnership between Niger and the World Bank that focuses on poverty reduction, resilience building, and women’s empowerment. The program provides monthly cash transfers to extremely poor households to smooth their consumption expenditures and improve their ability to cope with shocks. It also provides “economic inclusion” support—life and micro-entrepreneurship skills training, coaching, and support to village savings groups—and helps poor children get essential mental stimulation in their early years. Such programs can respond quickly to help poor and vulnerable families prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic: As the virus spread, the program expanded to four hundred thousand households to protect them from the pandemic’s adverse economic consequences. The program is well-placed to assist poor households with rising food insecurity and climate shocks.

A successful response will need to include supporting women and innovation. Because women are the primary beneficiaries of Wadata Talaka, the program is an important vehicle for their empowerment. Evaluations of the economic inclusion program show that in the eighteen months since it began, it improved household consumption and food security. The total income of women beneficiaries has increased (by 60 to 100 percent, much of it from non-farm businesses), and there is strong evidence of gains in their mental health and social wellbeing.

To develop such systems reaching the poorest and most vulnerable, countries will need strong social registries and good enrollment, delivery, and payment systems, often leveraging technology. The government of Niger is fully committed to these efforts. For example, responding to climate change, Wadata Talaka was the first program of its kind in West Africa to use satellite data to quickly anticipate drought hotspots and provide emergency funds more quickly than usual (three months ahead of the traditional response) to help people before they entered the lean season. Research is currently underway to measure the impact of that speed.

At a time when countries are forced to contend with the ebb and flow of shocks like climate change, pandemics, conflict, or food price increases, investments in social protection systems are more critical than ever. Niger’s programs serve as an example of just how impactful such adaptive systems can be.

Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou is the prime minister of Niger.

Mamta Murthi is vice president for human development at the World Bank.

The post How Niger’s safety net helps its most vulnerable citizens thrive amid crises appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Sakhi in IPRA Peace Search: What the historic women’s uprising in Iran teaches us about resisting authoritarianism appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The manner in which an estimated 107,000 people got out of Mariupol still remains little understood. Russian roadblocks surrounded the city and citizens were not allowed out. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented an evacuation plan on March 3 which Russia quickly rejected. The international community demanded safe passage for civilians, but the Russians stalled.

The first convoy of vehicles left Russian-held Mariupol on March 5-6, and it did so without Russia’s permission. Father Pavel Kostel, a priest with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who was in Mariupol at the time, was part of the first convoy that got out. In this September 24 interview, he explains how people cunningly circumvented the Russian checkpoints and made their way to freedom. The interview has been edited for clarity.

Did you lead a convoy of cars out of Mariupol on March 5?

We did not lead a convoy of cars ourselves; we joined the main convoy of about 100 cars. We couldn’t take the initiative because we had a problem leaving Mariupol. As turned out, everyone was a leader. Everyone tried to help everyone in the convoy. A large group of people left, and I was one of those people.

How did you get out?

I’ll start with how the convoy actually formed. We found out by chance that there was an opportunity for many cars to pass. We heard a radio report. There were no normal communications. I could hardly get a cell phone signal. The priest who was with me heard the report, and we just started driving because we had no contact with other people. We passed three military checkpoints, but they stopped us at the fourth. That checkpoint was blocking men of conscription age, from 18 to 60 years old, from leaving Mariupol. Cars began to accumulate at the checkpoint, and a convoy formed of around 100 cars between the third and fourth roadblocks. That’s why so many cars and buses gathered. Someone tried to count the people, but everything was very chaotic, and we do not know the final number.

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Where did the convoy stay overnight? Did you sleep in your cars?

We were stuck between roadblocks at a kind of fork in the road when the head of the neighboring village council saw all the people, women, and families with children, and told us about a remote village, some 30 kilometers from the Mariupol-Zaporizhzhia highway, where we could sleep. He said to go to the village of Temryuk. We drove from 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it was almost curfew when we got there. People were worried. We didn’t know how the Russians would react. The people in the convoy refused to go to the village at first. The head of the village talked them into it because it was really cold, so we went there to spend the night.

What happened next?

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko facilitated talks to get buses out of the city. We were supposed to join these buses the next day, March 6.

How did you get out of the village?

We gathered near the village school at 8 a.m. for a meeting. Everyone who was in cars agreed to go together. It happened spontaneously because no one knew each other. Everyone wanted to get out of that hell. No one appointed me leader. Who am I, after all. I’m just a priest. I told them that I knew the mayor, and that there was an opportunity to join the convoy of buses. But then we got news that the buses had not been allowed to leave.

Someone from the village told me that we could bypass the fourth checkpoint by taking a road through the fields. Some people went to the fields to check and confirmed that there was a road. A group of cars went ahead as scouts because they knew the road. A large column of cars followed after them. We hoped that our sheer numbers would keep the Russians from shooting us. One car is easy to shoot up, but a convoy has too many witnesses. I think that this is what prevented us from being robbed.

When we were driving along the road on Sunday, we saw dead Russians at a checkpoint. Russian soldiers left their own dead comrades behind. They didn’t even want to pick them up. It was terrible. We were zigzagging around them. That’s when you understand that this is war. You understand that you can also die. You don’t know what lies in store for you. We drove around them. Ahead of us, there were three more Ukrainian checkpoints. They checked us to make sure we weren’t saboteurs.

What was the experience like as you crossed the first three Russian checkpoints out of Mariupol?

They didn’t see us as a group at all. They examined each car and the people in it separately. They didn’t pay that much attention to the fact that it was a column of cars. If they had wanted, they could have taken anyone from the convoy and that would have been it. But then they weren’t as aggressive toward people as they are now. They didn’t rob anyone or take money, as happened later. My assistant and I introduced ourselves as priests. We told them that they we were leaving just like everyone else. Of course, the Russian soldiers introduced themselves as being from the Donetsk People’s Republic. “Where are you going?” We had a residence permit in western Ukraine, in Kamianets-Podilskyi, so we were a little worried about that. But they let us pass without any problems. They said, “We’ve got priests, too.”

Some of them asked strange questions, some were more aggressive, but there was no super-aggressive interrogation. That started later. They didn’t force any of the men to get undressed.

Where are you a priest now?

I am a priest in the Pauline Order, the monastic Order of St. Paul the Hermit. We have five monasteries in western Ukraine. My brothers, priests, live in a church with a monastery in Kamianets-Podilskyi. The order sent me there, and now I help them; we work together. We eagerly await the liberation of Mariupol, of course! I have contacts there who stayed, but I can’t just go back. Priests are in danger there now.

Is there anything else we should know about the evacuation?

It’s very difficult to talk about the evacuations because people in Mariupol do not believe the city authorities. Everyone remembers and talks about the evacuations with a lot of emotion. Why did it happen this way and not another way? Why didn’t the authorities organize it?

You have to understand that when you leave Mariupol and see Russians in front of you, there are no rules. People always hope that somehow the Russians will be reasonable, that they won’t kill you, but they have no conscience. This is the lottery that our life has become. You shouldn’t trust them because they don’t keep any promises.

It’s a miracle that we got through at all. Everything could have turned out differently. You just go into the unknown full of adrenaline and thank God that everything worked out.

Melinda Haring is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Vladislav Davidzon is a journalist based in Paris, France, and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He is the author of “From Odessa with Love.” Marta Smyrnova contributed reporting. Editor’s note: This essay has been edited for clarity.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 24, 2022

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Ukrainian priest recounts escape from Russian siege of Mariupol appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Communities have been working at the local level and know better than anyone what their needs are.” 

Research indicates that, over the past two decades, even the well-intentioned among foreign peacebuilders in Afghanistan tended to dismiss such messaging. We conducted interviews in the winter of 2022 with Afghan and foreign peacebuilders who worked in Afghanistan’s government ministries, multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, and the military, as well as with humanitarian aid recipients. These interviews suggest two key lessons about supporting women’s rights in peacebuilding. They also demonstrate that, though Afghan women have been included in certain peacebuilding efforts, these experiences were largely tokenist and minimally empowering.

Bribing and lecturing local counterparts doesn’t work 

Foreign peacebuilders’ approach of strong-arming and talking down to local counterparts undermined their aims to advance women’s rights. Across diverse sectors of peacebuilding, Afghans described the widespread sentiment that “foreigners think that they know better than you what you need” and “Afghans are seen as numbers, not people.” Consequently, peacebuilding failed to operationalize plans for gender equality.

The all-or-nothing approach of peacebuilding missions and personnel did not allow locals to engage in good faith. For example, at the local level, foreign peacebuilders established community development councils (CDCs), democratically-elected bodies designed to govern villages and allocate funding for small-scale development projects. CDCs were required to be 50 percent female in order to receive funding. However, village elders’ inability or refusal to meet this requirement along with their need for funding resulted in the widespread fabrication of women’s participation.

Similar outcomes emerged in efforts to increase women’s inclusion in the workforce. An interviewee recalled the World Bank pressuring the Ministry of Education to increase the number of female teachers “overnight” in the historically more conservative south and east of Afghanistan. The threat of losing funding led Afghan officials to agree to these unattainable demands. 

Even grassroots peacebuilding was compromised. Being lectured about the importance of gender equality for two decades habituated civil society groups to foreign peacebuilders’ preferences. This motivated locals to shape the goals and methods of project proposals to appease donors when they were unrealistic in the short term.

Tokenism burdens and limits women 

Research shows that, over the past decade, girls in the Global South have become icons of investment and saviorism. International organizations and donors have argued that investing in girls results in a chain of positive effects, including the deepening of women’s rights, upward trends in national production, more peaceful societies, and “world salvation.” 

These arguments were made in Afghanistan where women’s representation in politics and the economy was framed as a panacea—a standalone solution to patriarchal attitudes, violence, and steep socioeconomic challenges. The breadth and depth of demands placed on women’s seats at the table pitted few female representatives against the exclusionary strategies of intervenors, which limited women’s capabilities.   

For example, several of our interviewees expressed that donors and foreign peacebuilders pressured Afghan women to make compromises on women’s rights to suit the objectives of US strategy. Following the renewal of US negotiations with the Taliban in 2019, donors told members of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to address women’s rights from an Islamic perspective. This privileged the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam and asked female AIHRC members to sacrifice the rights of women they were expected to represent. 

The constraints placed on women peacebuilders were also evident during the prisoner swap, when five thousand Taliban inmates were released, including four-hundred hardline fighters who were involved in large-scale attacks across the country. Members of the AIHRC asked foreign peacebuilders for transparency on behalf of victims, but they were excluded from discussions about the prisoner release. Women representatives could not further gender equality when at the helm of human rights oversight they could not even challenge the release of perpetrators. 

How can foreign peacebuilding effectively support women’s rights? 

Our research suggests that foreign peacebuilding’s efforts at promoting moral and strategic imperatives without real local input constrains women representatives and impedes steps toward gender equality. Women’s seats at the table have become a consolation prize amid the harmful actions of government agencies, multilateral organizations, foreign aid organizations, and foreign peacebuilders themselves. 

As such, Afghan women have been included, but not empowered. 

This was in part because Afghans in general were included into their own governance, but ultimately lacked the power to shape their future. Their fates were significantly determined by the choices of foreign and violent actors. This reality was never starker than at the moment when it mattered most: at the US-Taliban negotiations in Doha, Qatar. Not just women representatives, but the entire Afghan government, was excluded. Ultimately, the solution is power, and neither the United States nor the Taliban are willing to give it up when it is not in their interest. 

Afghanistan has amplified the need for a course correction. The international community can only support Afghan women if it allows more room for local agency in peacebuilding.      

Sophie Mae Berman is currently a member of the project “On Fair Terms: The Ethics of Peace Negotiation and Mediation” at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and a former intern with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. 

Dr. Yelena Biberman is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and an associate professor of political science at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Her book, Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. 

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

Learn more

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Table of contents

Introduction
The case of Brazil: A young, yet resilient democracy
A stronger democracy in the long run
The role of the United States and the international community
Conclusion
Acknowledgements

Brazil—Latin America’s largest economy and the fourth-largest democracy in the world—will elect its next president, governors, congress, and state-level assemblies in October 2022. This is one of the most momentous elections in recent years, a result of the inflection point that Brazil faces alongside concern about what may transpire on the day of the election and in the days afterward. This uncertainty, combined with global trends of declining democratic freedoms in recent years, suggests that in the aftermath of the October elections, Brazil has an opportunity to reinforce efforts to strengthen its institutions and recalibrate its democracy to meet domestic and global challenges. This issue brief compiles actionable recommendations for Brazil to do just that. 

Introduction

At the 2022 Summit for Democracy, President Joe Biden noted that democratic backsliding is the “defining challenge of our time.”¹

Democracy, as a system of government, is ever evolving. However, democratic freedoms have been waning worldwide for the past sixteen years.² In 2021, twice as many countries lost civil liberties and freedoms compared to those that improved them.³ Today, more than two-thirds of the world population lives in nondemocratic regimes, or in countries that have seen democratic backsliding in recent years.⁴ 

This trend also holds true in Latin America and the Caribbean. Authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua have survived for years. Other countries in the region have seen a dramatic decline in civil liberties. According to 2021 data, half of the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are experiencing some degree of democratic erosion.⁵ 

Brazil is no exception to these global trends. The October elections offer an opportunity to begin addressing concerns about the resilience of its democracy. From the state to the national level, Brazilians will have an opportunity to choose the future trajectory of their democracy. The challenges that Brazilian democracy has confronted in recent years—beginning with the massive demonstrations of 2013 and continuing through questioning of the democratic model among some sectors in recent years—suggest that, regardless of which parties and politicians are elected, Brazilians must prioritize strengthening their democratic institutions now, and in the years to come. 

The case of Brazil: A young, yet resilient democracy

As the world undergoes a wave of democratic questioning, and even backsliding, Brazilians head to the polls as the country is at a crossroads, making it important to shift its gaze from the headlines of the day to thinking about longer-term solutions to the country’s political crisis.

Brazil is a young democracy. It was not until 1989 that the country held its first direct presidential elections, after the end of the military dictatorship. Since then, Brazilian democracy has made great strides, establishing a well-regarded electoral system, overcoming hyperinflation and economic crises, and consolidating around a vibrant party system.

The October 2022 elections are a crucial test for Brazilian democracy. Although the elections will be another opportunity to see democracy in action, increasingly high levels of polarization and disinformation have contributed to extremist narratives, episodes of violence, and the questioning of democratic principles. 

The Brazilian electoral process has been regarded as one of the fastest and most reliable in the world. But the turbulent run-up to the election has raised concerns that the transparency and fairness of democratic processes may be undermined, and that the resiliency of the electoral process and democratic institutions will be tested. Ensuring the integrity of this process, while also mitigating the risk of political violence, is imperative. Any action to further strengthen the resilience of Brazil’s democratic system is contingent upon an electoral process that fosters the proper function of institutions, and protects civil society and an independent media. This critical moment presents a unique opportunity for Brazil to further bolster its democratic system and public trust in its democracy in the years to come.  

Over the past generation, Brazilian democracy has fluctuated between moments of high confidence in the democratic system and periods of political and institutional crisis, in which the strength and resilience of its democracy were in doubt. In recent years, Brazilian democratic institutions have risen to the challenge of recalibrating their capabilities to face new challenges. 

Three examples illustrate their resilience. First, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil was able to delay the electoral process and shift the date of municipal elections, all within the bounds of its constitution.⁶ Further, state and local governors adopted a variety of strategies to respond to the pandemic, with democratic federalism contributing to a panoply of experiments for addressing isolation and lockdown measures.⁷ Second, following antidemocratic protests in September 2021 that included messages threatening the Supreme Court and elections, a variety of representatives of democratic institutions (such as the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, civil-society organizations, and the media), came together to publicly condemn such proposals.⁸ The backlash forced President Jair Bolsonaro to change his tone and back down from his more extreme positions.⁹ Lastly, the manifestation of professors, jurists, students, civil-society representatives, business leaders, and former and current government officials, through a letter with more than nine hundred thousand signatories in favor of democracy in Brazil, is yet another example of the esteem for democratic principles and respect of civil liberties, especially when institutional credibility is questioned.¹⁰

Brazilian institutions are already taking concrete steps to fortify their capabilities ahead of, and beyond, the upcoming electoral cycle. Such efforts are, and will continue to be, important to ensure a healthy democracy. But as we look ahead, even beyond the October elections, what mechanisms are needed to prevent backsliding and foster the resilience of democratic institutions and the strength of Brazilian democracy in the coming years? 

A stronger democracy in the long run

In July 2022, the Atlantic Council held individual consultations and convened a group of key Brazilian and international experts from civil-society organizations, the public and private sectors, academia, the press, and others to discuss concrete ways in which Brazil could further support its democratic system ahead of, and beyond, the upcoming elections. Below are actionable recommendations for next steps, including suggestions for the role the United States and the international community could play to support a prosperous Brazilian democracy in the long run. 

Institutionalize unwritten democratic norms that ensure independence. In recent years, many unwritten democratic norms have been taken for granted and, in some cases, flaunted. One example is the nomination of the prosecutor general of the republic (PGR), the lead of the federal prosecutorial service (Ministério Público Federal, MPF). Constitutionally, the nomination of the PGR must follow a process that includes presidential nomination and approval by the Senate.¹¹ Customarily, however, since 2003 the president selects a name from a list of three names chosen by prosecutors. The benefit of this so-called lista tríplice is that it ensures some coherence within the MPF, as well as ensuring that the prosecutor general is more independent from the other branches of government. 

To reinforce checks and balances, institutionalizing such norms and consolidating the autonomy of institutions with political oversight is imperative. The practice of selecting the PGR via a lista tríplice guaranteed an initial layer of independence to the prosecutor general’s role. This was especially important because the MPF should remain autonomous given its oversight role, including in the electoral process.¹² Thus, institutionalizing such norms would ensure the impartiality of the prosecutor general’s nomination and foster the autonomous role of the MPF within the political system, while also reaffirming the independence of the Brazilian judiciary and its prosecutors. Using the example of the lista tríplice for the MPF, instilling processes in other democratic organs—such as the Federal Police, the Federal Accountability Office (TCU), and the Comptroller General of Brazil (CGU)—could be internal mechanisms to guarantee checks and balances, and the appropriate indepence of these offices from established political forces and interested groups. 

Address challenges for effective rule of law. To ensure a vibrant democracy, the rule of law must be effective. In Brazil, 17.6 people were killed daily by police forces in 2020, with such violence rarely leading to consequences.¹³ Data show that 28 percent of federal officeholders have been investigated or indicted for criminal behavior, while only a handful have been held accountable.¹⁴ In the case of the state of Rio de Janeiro, for example, members of militias and organized-crime groups also have ties to the political system.¹⁵ These data imply that strengthening the rule of law remains a key challenge. Better trainings for police forces to address abuses, reforms to oversight agencies to improve the accountability of Brazil’s judicial system, and fostering a lawfulness culture through the school system and civil-society activism could help ensure the effectiveness of the rule of law, while also targeting the younger generations as positive agents of change, and promoters of democracy and the rule of law. 

Depoliticization of the armed forces. The armed forces are a state institution responsible for protecting the sovereignty of the state, the order of the democratic system, and the safety of citizens, while also guaranteeing the ability of the three branches of government to properly function.¹⁶ As such, the armed forces must remain impartial in politics. In recent years, active military officials have taken civil positions within the Brazilian political system. As a way of example is Minister Eduardo Pazuello, a three-star general, as Minister of Health.¹⁷ Even in the constitution, deepening and solidifying the impartiality of the armed forces is imperative for the proper control of powers within the democratic system. Congress should take a more active role in ensuring this impartiality, as it began to do with a bill introduced in 2021 that aims to clarify the role of the armed forces and active military in the political system.¹⁸ It is critical for the military, the police, and members of any state institutions to refrain from any interference in political and political party-based activities—including, but not limited to, the elections. 

Ensure equitable political representation. There has been long-standing dissatisfaction with the lack of representativeness of the political system. Women represent more than 50 percent of the Brazilian population, yet account for only about 15 percent and 13 percent of representatives in the House and the Senate, respectively. The data are just as concerning for other groups. Ensuring better representation and equal participation in politics by women, indigenous communities, black Brazilians, and other marginalized groups would be a first step in having a better representation of Brazilian society at the decision-making table and, thus, more effective public policies to target their needs. More ambitious goals and affirmative action would help to move Brazil in that direction. However, enforcement is also imperative. Brazil has a gender quota requiring that women make up 30 percent of candidates for political parties. But lack of incentives for further engagement of women in politics, in addition to the high number of cases of violence against women in politics and structural imbalances, limit the potential for women’s equitable participation.¹⁹ New legislation that aims to punish violence against women in politics, in effect for the 2022 elections, is a first step in that direction.²⁰ Civil society has an important contribution to make in monitoring and denouncing cases of violence against women in politics, including those happening virtually. In addition to monitoring, electoral agencies should follow through on the enforcement of this legislation. Establishing the means through which more women could take on leadership positions in political bodies and parties could help push Brazilian politics toward more realistic representation and actual participation.

Safeguard a welcoming environment for a vibrant civil society. Among many actors in healthy and vibrant democracies, civil society and the media play key roles in ensuring a healthy public debate and a democratic political system. In Brazil, journalists and activists often face dangerous threats against their activities, and even their lives. Journalists Conrado Hubner and Patricia Campos Mello faced intimidation for criticizing political figures, while journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira were killed in 2022 during an excursion in the Brazilian Amazon, apparently for photographing illegal fishing in the area.²¹

In addition to further bolstering safeguards for press freedom, respect for and inclusion of perspectives from civil-society organizations, among other stakeholders, is imperative to promote effective public policies—and a democratic system that delivers to its citizens. Further cooperation among civil-society organizations, domestically and internationally, could boost the role and significance of these voices within Brazil. More coordinated efforts—from local associations to leading international civil-society organizations in country—would help promote a louder and more cohesive voice for civil society in Brazil. This was recently done through a letter with more than three thousand signatories, including former Supreme Court justices, actors, musicians, and even executives, expressing their support for democracy and trust in the Brazilian voting system.²² In addition, guaranteeing penalties for intimidation against civil-society representatives, as well as members of the media, is also imperative to safeguarding a prosperous environment for independent civil society and media.  

Further strengthening institutional capabilities to manage the challenges of disinformation. Disinformation and misinformation are global challenges. As such, Brazil’s Electoral Supreme Court (TSE, in Portuguese) has prioritized disinformation as a challenge to the electoral processes in 2022 and beyond. Brazilian institutions, civil-society organizations, fact-checking bodies, and news outlets should work together to mitigate impact and risks. Based on the developments that unfolded after the US elections in 2020—including, but not limited to, January 6—as well as the role that disinformation played in Brazilian elections in 2018 and 2020, TSE established partnerships with social media and messaging platforms, creating a united front to mitigate risks and raise awareness to the known challenge of disinformation.²³ This is a proactive initiative to promote and endure the credibility of electoral bodies. To go one step forward, Brazilian news outlets could use already-established COVID-19 data-gathering strategies and go directly to local and state governments to identify disinformation and its sources. This strategy could facilitate and speed up the work of fact-checking institutions in explaining disinformation, of the media (and TSE itself) in countering and spreading it, and of social media platforms in removing it, as appropriate. Overall, having a more coordinated civil society and safeguarding an independent media will result in greater checks against authoritarian tendencies.

Re-establish trust in the political system and foster civic engagement beyond electoral cycles. In recent history, corruption cases among politicians, disinformation, misinformation, and other factors have exacerbated distrust in political institutions in Brazil.²⁴ Polarization has also deepened political and social divides. Regaining confidence in the democratic system is an uphill battle. However, in the long run, revigorated trust in the political system is imperative to foster civic engagement beyond electoral cycles. As a fundamental principle of democracy, broad and active civic engagement is essential to fortify an established and well-functioning democracy in Brazil. This educational effort must begin in schools, to educate the next generations to be active and engaged citizens, and to tackle the question of what democracy means.

But developing a comprehensive awareness-raising campaign—led by government agencies, in coordination with civil-society organizations and other key actors—could be a first step in the right direction to clarify the roles and responsibilities of elected officials and other public figures, as well as individuals’ rights and duties. In a country where voting is mandatory (with a few exceptions), society must have the tools to make well-informed decisions about its political representatives. Most importantly, only a well-educated society with access to transparent and accurate information, and comprehension of the political game, can hold politicians and democratic institutions accountable. 

The role of the United States and the international community

Support immediate recognition of results and quick confirmation of the legitimacy of the electoral process. Given Brazil’s electronic-voting system, electoral results are determined and announced on the same day elections are held. The agility of the system and the seal of credibility given by international recognition curbs potential unrest in the expectation of results. As such, the international community, represented by individual countries and international organizations, must be able to recognize the legitimacy of results immediately after their announcement. 

Continuing the long tradition of welcoming international electoral-observation missions, the upcoming elections will include missions from the Organization of American States, Mercosur’s Parliament, and the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (Uniore).²⁵ These missions should aim to release their verdicts on the freedom and fairness of the electoral process quickly, ideally no more than forty-eight hours following Election Day. Beyond the electoral cycle, countries should be explicit in recognizing the historical respect of Brazil toward its democratic system and principles, as well as efforts to improve their capabilities. The United States, for example, recently endorsed trust in the Brazilian electoral system, following questions about the legitimacy of this process.²⁶ 

Establish a US-Brazil high-level dialogue on democracy promotion. In the context of recent commitments made by both the United States and Brazil on the occasion of the Summit for Democracy, both countries restarted the US-Brazil Human Rights Working Group. This is one step forward in both countries’ efforts to strengthen their own democracies and promote the principles of a rules-based order globally. Given similarities and the strong, historic partnership between the United States and Brazil, both countries could benefit from a more direct dialogue in terms of best practices and lessons learned with regard to common challenges to democracy, and potential common solutions. More broadly, high-level cooperation on this front would safeguard principles of a rules-based democratic order, in addition to deepening the bilateral relationship and fostering similar practices across the hemisphere. Within this framework, further cooperation with the US Department of State, and even the US Departments of Justice and Defense, could help move the needle forward, while also including civil-society and private-sector representatives from both countries.

Conclusion

The next Brazilian government will face a critical moment to strengthen the country’s democracy and its institutions to prove effective in addressing citizens’ needs, especially in challenging times both economically and socially. A key ingredient for democratic crisis is the growing belief that democratic government does not serve citizens’ needs. Addressing this issue and rebuilding trust in the political system are vital for long-term domestic stability in Brazil. 

This issue brief aimed to suggest a path forward to begin this task. 

Beyond Brazil itself, the country’s democracy is a bellwether for democratic health in the Western Hemisphere. The polarization, concerns of electoral violence, marginalization of minority voices, and other patterns occurring in Brazil must be addressed and condemned. Only through systemic analysis and prevention can all stakeholders work to guarantee democratic health presently, and in the years to come. 

Acknowledgements

Many of the ideas in this spotlight were informed by a July 27 strategy session organized by the Atlantic Council, which featured the participation of key Brazilian and international experts from civil-society organizations, the public and private sectors, academia, the press, and others. We thank the many participants in the strategy session, including those who gave permission to be publicly acknowledged: President Laura Chinchilla, Ambassador Michael McKinley, Ambassador Liliana Ayalde, Miriam Kornblith, Feliciano Guimarães, Patricia Campos Mello, Flávia Pellegrino, Guilherme Casarões, Bruno Brandão, Emilia Carvalho, Thiago Esteves, Cintia Hoskinson, and Francisco Brito. This document is also a product of independent research and consultations carried out by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. We thank those who took the time to share their insights with us, including Daniela Campello and Cesar Zucco. A special thank you also goes to our Brazil nonresident senior fellow, Ricardo Sennes, for the countless advice through the years and during the production of this publication. Isabel Bernhard provided invaluable writing and editorial support. Thank you to Jason Marczak, senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, and Maria Fernanda Bozmoski, deputy director for programs, for their guidance. Finally, the Atlantic Council would like to thank Action for Democracy for the partnership and generous support, as well as the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI) for its continued collaboration, as an institutional partner to this initiative.

About the author

Valentina Sader is associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, where she leads the center’s work on Brazil, gender equality, and diversity, and manages its advisory council. She has co-authored publications on the US-Brazil strategic partnership and coordinated events with high-level policymakers, business leaders, and civil-society members in both Brazil and the United States. Valentina provides regular commentary in English and Portuguese on political and economic issues in Brazil to major media outlets. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Valentina worked at the Eurasia Group, the embassy of Brazil in Washington, DC, and the mission of Brazil to the Organization of American States (OAS). Valentina holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from American University. Originally from Brazil, Valentina is a native Portuguese speaker, fluent in English, and proficient in Spanish.

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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Washington, DC—September 12, 2022—The Atlantic Council announced today that Ambassador Marcy Grossman will serve as a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and N7 Initiative in the Middle East Programs.

A former Canadian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Grossman will play a key role in building on the Atlantic Council’s growing body of work on Israeli-Arab normalization and regional conflict resolution initiatives through a dedicated gender lens.

“Ambassador Grossman brings creativity, skill, and an unparalleled network that will significantly strengthen the Atlantic Council’s work on normalization in the N7 program, including by ensuring the full inclusion of women in all the opportunities that accompany this trend,” said Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, Atlantic Council Distinguished Fellow. “We are fortunate to have this innovative, dynamic, and deeply experienced diplomat join our team.”

Grossman spent over twenty years abroad as a Canadian diplomat and has been on the leading edge of the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, including as an advocate for the role of women in diplomacy and peacebuilding. Prior to being appointed ambassador, she was Canada’s consul general to Dubai and the Northern Emirates.  

Over the span of her career, Grossman has developed an expertise in geopolitical, security, and economic issues impacting North America and the Middle East. She spent fifteen years representing Canada in four distinct regions of the United States, including as consul general in Miami and Denver, and as the senior trade commissioner in Dallas and Los Angeles.  

During her tenure in the United States, she was responsible for a wide range of Canada’s business, political, academic, consular, immigration, and public-safety interests. She also closed several large-scale foreign investment deals in cities across Canada.  

She is an international business development expert and was notably responsible for the creation of Canada’s foreign direct investment agency, Invest in Canada. Grossman joined Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 2001 as a senior trade officer, developing a full spectrum of investment marketing campaigns for Canada, including the publication of the bestselling book Innovation Nation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Ambassador Grossman to the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. We are excited that the broader public will now have the opportunity to hear and read the Ambassador’s expert insights and analysis, stemming from her extensive diplomatic career,” said Jonathan Panikoff, Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.”And we are thrilled that she will continue her distinguished leadership across a variety of spheres at the Atlantic Council—including her renowned efforts to encourage more women to take part in international security and diplomacy.”

Before joining Canada’s foreign service, Grossman held management positions in numerous federal government departments, including Industry Canada, Canada’s School of Public Service, and the Treasury Board. She launched her career in the criminal justice system, and between 1990 and 1998, served in various capacities within Correctional Services Canada. She is a graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, with a master’s degree in criminal psychology.  

For inquiries or to request an interview, please contact press@AtlanticCouncil.org

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The report, which according to Amnesty was written in an effort to protect civilians, has unwittingly endangered them by fueling Russian propaganda narratives. The unintended yet predictable consequences of the report have prompted Amnesty International to announce a much-needed internal review. 

Amnesty accused the Ukrainian armed forces of “launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings.” The report implies some sort of blanket prohibition on operating in civilian areas or using civilian infrastructure, when in fact the military’s responsibility under international law is to avoid locating military objectives near populated areas and to protect civilians from the dangers resulting from military operations to the maximum extent possible. Amnesty’s misinterpretation has muddied the waters with potentially disastrous consequences.

In a recent episode that illustrated the problematic nature of the report, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya referenced Amnesty’s findings as justification for Russia’s occupation and militarization of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The Russian armed forces stand accused of using the plant, which by Nebenzya’s own admission is civilian infrastructure, to house the artillery and rocket systems it uses to attack Ukrainian forces on the other side of the Dnipro River. When the Ukrainians fire back, they are accused of targeting civilian infrastructure.

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How did Amnesty get it so dangerously wrong? The organization itself wants to know and will undertake a review conducted by external reviewers to examine the decisions and working practices within Amnesty that led to the publication of the release. “We want to understand what exactly went wrong and why, in order to learn lessons and improve our work in the field of human rights,” Amnesty International said. 

As Amnesty begins its assessment of what went wrong, Oksana Pokalchuk has offered her own diagnosis. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on August 13, Pokalchuk identified some of Amnesty’s missteps, including its failure to adequately cooperate with the Ukrainian government and its wild misinterpretation of international law. 

Amnesty’s argument that the Ukrainian military should somehow protect populated areas from afar is completely out of touch with the military realities of Russia’s ongoing invasion, Pokalchuk noted. Instead, she explained, assessments of how well a military protects civilians must be made on a case-by-case basis.

Shame is an important tool for compelling governments and militaries to adhere to international norms. But so is cooperation. Pokalchuk highlighted that the Ukrainian government has a solid track record of responding to Amnesty’s concerns and was not given adequate time to respond in this instance. 

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The founder of the UA Recover Initiative, Donald Bowser, has called attention to Ukraine’s successes in compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL). In what he identified as one of the great reforms in the Ukrainian military over the last eight years, thousands of Ukrainian officers were trained on IHL in joint programs with international organizations. IHL has been integrated into the curriculum of both military universities and army training programs. Given Ukraine’s record on compliance, it seems Amnesty had other avenues to voice their concerns that could have enabled them to advocate for Ukrainian civilians without empowering their Russian attackers. 

Pokalchuk also recounted how Amnesty’s Ukrainian branch was silenced in favor of a team of international researchers who were unfamiliar with the local language and context. Pokalchuk described the attitude of the main branch as “condescending and unfair” and highlighted the “total disregard for the principle of international solidarity proclaimed in Amnesty’s statute.” 

But while Amnesty’s main branch stands accused of colonial attitudes, the organization’s Canadian branch has tried to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine. In its own statement, Amnesty Canada expressed regret that the press release was published without sufficient context and did not pay due attention to the numerous war crimes committed by the Russian military in Ukraine. It also condemned the instrumentalization of the report by Russian propagandists. 

“Several years ago, Amnesty International purposefully decentralized to better listen, respond to, and be led by the voices of human rights defenders on the frontlines. Unfortunately, this press release defaulted to outdated ways of working that centralize knowledge and decision-making while placing local expertise and understanding at the margins. We have done this at considerable risk to our colleagues and rights holders in Ukraine,” Amnesty Canada wrote.

As Pokalchuk emphasized in her editorial, Amnesty has a dedicated staff of human rights advocates and researchers, all of whom share a commitment to humanitarian values including amplifying diverse voices and international solidarity. As it conducts its postmortem, returning to those values is step number one. Amnesty’s leadership has a responsibility to uphold its stated mission and to place its trust in its staff, especially when they raise red flags. Failure to do so in Ukraine has proved disastrous but can hopefully serve as a much-needed wake-up call.

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Foreword
Introduction
Gender analysis: A tool for understanding the human security environment in Ukraine
The Kremlin’s gender playbook
Conflict-related sexual violence: A tactic of the war in Ukraine
The agency of Ukrainian women
Women’s civil society networks are saving Ukrainians
Recommendations
Tactical
Operational
Strategic
Conclusion

Foreword

From the hospitals of Mariupol to the streets of Bucha, the Russian war in Ukraine has extracted an unacceptably high cost, while banding NATO allies and partners together in an unprecedented tide of support. In bilateral and multilateral security assistance packages, the transatlantic community has sent Ukraine javelins, High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARs), and all manner of weapons to defend against the Russian invasion. Still, Russia’s war continues against the nation of Ukraine and its people.

So how should future military assistance account for the different impacts of the war on Ukrainian civilians? What strategies remain for NATO allies and partners to enhance their support beyond weapons and materiel? The answers lie in using gender analyses to zero in on the unique human security challenges facing Ukraine.

When we overlook the role of gender in conflict, we miss the opportunity to both lead with our values and make our military support more effective. Applying a gender analysis to our security assistance is a solution that allies and partners have already agreed to implement in forums from the United Nations to NATO. In fact, it’s a tool that many allies have already developed within their own militaries. Now is the time to employ it in support of Ukraine.

This starts with acknowledging the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda. The WPS Agenda, passed under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, recognizes the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls, and their critical role in reconstructing societies. Militaries can apply gender analyses to better understand and tailor assistance to the unique security environments in which they operate.

To help policymakers think through how a gender analysis can shape what security assistance should look like—and, in many cases, how allied militaries can implement solutions at scale, and consistent with political decisions that have already been made—we are proud to offer this issue brief. Our intention is to demonstrate to global decision makers that incorporating gender can and should be integrated in real-time conflicts to achieve real results.

Our support to Ukraine must not waver, but more can be done to mitigate the severe impact of Russia’s war on the Ukrainian people. Allies and partners already have the political mandate to integrate the WPS Agenda into their operations. They already have the tools, training, and technical expertise to implement it in the field. The next step is making this common practice. This issue brief spells out ten steps for how to do so in Ukraine.

Sahana Dharmapuri and Christopher Skaluba

Sahana Dharmapuri is the director of Our Secure Future: Women Make the Difference. Christopher Skaluba is the director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Introduction

The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept, which was adopted in June and supersedes a 2010 version, is known for several significant firsts, including a focus on China and an emphasis on climate change. Another important first concerns the need to integrate “human security and the Women, Peace and Security agenda” across all of NATO’s core tasks: deterrence and defense; crisis prevention and management; and cooperative security. The Strategic Concept—which provides a security diagnosis that is meant to influence policy—highlights gender equality as a reflection of NATO’s values. It also calls attention to the disproportionate impact of pervasive instability, including conflict-related sexual violence, on women, children, and minority groups. This inclusion reflects agreement among allies that gender equality and human security are core components of individual and collective security.

Allies are witnessing the linkage between gender and human security in real time through the Russian war in Ukraine. As the war enters its six month, nearly each week brings new reports of war crimes, genocide, and sexual violence perpetrated by Russian forces against Ukrainians. Since the February invasion, the Kremlin has intentionally targeted Ukrainian civilians in bread lines, apartment buildings, schools, churches, and hospitals, while employing disinformation campaigns to obfuscate the reality of Putin’s “special military operation” from the Russian public. By the end of May, Ukraine had identified more than six hundred Russian war crime suspects. While Ukraine is not a member of the Alliance, the outcome of the war in Ukraine—and human security of its citizens—is of vital importance to NATO, European security, and the rules-based international order emphasized throughout this Strategic Concept.

Some advocates have encouraged NATO to be more proactive in addressing gender and human security issues in Ukraine. NATO has policies and guidelines on the protection of civilians; women, peace, and security; children and armed conflict; and conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, and action plans or handbooks to support their implementation. These frameworks, however, only apply to NATO-led operations and no such operations currently exist in Ukraine. In a war where NATO is not directly involved, but can readily see the impact on Ukrainian civilians, what does implementing policies on women, peace, and security and human security look like? How should NATO allies understand and account for the human security challenges in their bilateral assistance to Ukraine? Beyond the NATO policy documents and the global United Nations Security Council mandates, the gendered nature of the conflict in Ukraine is a core component of examining the war, its impact on civilians, and planning-informed military action. Many allies have the information and capabilities to address such human-centered issues—they just need to incorporate them in their bilateral military assistance. This is more possible than it seems.

Gender analysis: A tool for understanding the human security environment in Ukraine

With the evolving conflict dynamic in Ukraine, humanitarian organizations such as UN Women and CARE International have published comprehensive analyses highlighting gender dynamics and human insecurity in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s aggressive military campaign. These analyses show, for example, that the majority of people fleeing Ukraine are women, girls, and boys, as Ukrainian men between the ages of eighteen and sixty have been conscripted to fight; the crisis is largely exacerbating preexisting gender and intersectional inequalities and discrimination; and incidents of gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence and conflict-related sexual violence, are reportedly increasing. The gender analyses come with recommendations for humanitarian actors, operating in Ukraine and neighboring countries, which have been vital in providing tailored services, shelter, and care for Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced people.

The analytical products also are useful for militaries, which often excel at analyzing and distilling information to inform their operations and activities. Gender analysis provides militaries with a comprehensive range of information about the different ways the war in Ukraine is impacting civilians based on social norms and behaviors associated with their identity as a man, woman, or gender diverse person and other identity characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, or disability status. For example, a single Ukrainian man over the age of sixty with a physical disability has had different challenges and experiences, and will make different decisions about his needs during this conflict than a Roma woman in her twenties who is married with three children. While this may seem intuitive, these are important details for responding to the unique and different needs of the estimated 12.8 million displaced Ukrainians from both a humanitarian and military perspective.

A gender analysis centers people—not the nation state, weapons, or equipment—when understanding security needs and interventions for the purposes of providing support, which in this case is to Ukraine. As the war continues and allied militaries increasingly deploy forces to locations across Eastern Europe, information gleaned through gender analyses will contribute to military planning for contingencies. Such information can ensure that military assistance and planned operations do not further exacerbate the deteriorating human security conditions on the ground. The challenge for militaries is often articulating the change in their tasks, requirements, or capabilities to respond to such conditions.

The sections below seek to highlight some of the salient gender-based information for allied militaries to better understand the human security environment in Ukraine. This brief does not suggest that other information is not germane or should be ignored, but rather seeks to distill information relevant for shaping current and future allied military responses. This brief does not argue that gender analysis can or should be used to wage war more effectively from a purely military operational perspective. It takes the position that to be considered militarily effective, military action must meet its desired objectives while mitigating cost and negative impact on civilians and humanitarian actors operating in the same space.

The Kremlin’s gender playbook

The Kremlin has intentionally targeted and exploited societal gender fault lines through hybrid warfare as a reliable tactic for destabilizing cohesion and unity among populations throughout Europe. Though its hybrid campaigns focus on many issues, gender issues are some of the most divisive and polarizing for local populations, making them ripe for targeted disinformation. In the Ukraine conflict, for example, the Kremlin accused a woman who gave birth in the immediate aftermath of the Mariupol maternity hospital bombing of being an actress paid by Ukraine to sow uncertainty about the reality of its operations. Separately, the Kremlin has continued to deny allegations that Russian forces committed acts of rape and sexual violence against Ukrainians, discrediting the claims as a hoax.

This is not a new tactic for Moscow. To maintain a level of control and influence in post-Soviet states, the Kremlin has historically weaponized gender. Disinformation campaigns attack LGBTQ+ and women activists, politicians, and other leaders to discredit them, humiliate them, or place them in a heightened risk of retaliatory violence. This weaponization is a notorious tactic of authoritarian and aspiring authoritarian regimes to degrade efforts toward democratization. In Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine, for example, rolling back LGBTQ+ and women’s rights has been a canary in the coal mine for the Kremlin’s influence in the face of democratic progress in those countries. Russian disinformation has succeeded—across Europe and in North America—in weaponizing sexist, racist, and homophobic belief sets within influential and excitable demographics to shift outcomes in elections and undercut democracy. Russia’s influence campaigns often proliferate the falsehood that expanding rights for women and LGBTQ+ individuals takes away rights from others. They link this expansion of rights for all to “Western influence” in a bid to undermine democratic movements, political candidates, and partnerships between post-Soviet states and the European Union and NATO. To the Kremlin, democratic progress within post-Soviet states is a threat to Russia’s traditional values and puts the future of Russia in danger.

In his speeches on Ukraine, Putin consistently references his goal of defending Russian “traditions” and “culture” as a justification for the Russian invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Putin’s calculated messaging is intended to demonstrate linkages in defending a shared national Russian identity rooted in traditional gender roles, norms, and expectations among Russian and Ukrainian men and women. His messaging is intended to “other,” or establish an “us versus them” mentality, both at the national level toward NATO and the West and at the individual level toward those who challenge status quo norms and seek to expand sociocultural gender roles, rights, and responsibilities to evolve Ukrainian society. In this way, Putin proliferates his own connections between individual identity and collective security. So when Putin claims Russia is being “threatened” by NATO at its borders, he is not only speaking of the political-military Alliance—but also the democratic world order that NATO stands for and the expansion of rights and liberties for all.

Since the Russian invasion, the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare campaigns have flooded the information environment with justifications for its invasion, denials of mass atrocities, and other mischaracterizations of the truth to breed uncertainty about the war among Russians, Ukrainians, and global audiences. The narrative, themes, and mechanisms for spreading Russian disinformation account for and exploit gender fault lines among the local populace to weaken societal cohesion and resilience. As allied militaries monitor the information environment from their capitals and establish their forces in Eastern Europe, they cannot afford to overlook Russia’s weaponization of gender as part of its campaign of aggression in Ukraine.

Conflict-related sexual violence: A tactic of the war in Ukraine

International organizations and national and local nongovernmental organizations have warned of increases in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) since the beginning of the invasion in February. NATO defines CRSV in its 2021 policy as “rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict.” As the war in Ukraine evolves, these organizations continue to report on the increased risk of CRSV faced by women and girls since they are overrepresented in the refugee and internally displaced person populations. La Strada International, a European platform against human trafficking, has highlighted how established human trafficking avenues in Ukraine run by criminal organizations continue to put more Ukrainians at risk of human trafficking, including sexual slavery, the longer the war continues. The UN Refugee Agency reports that displaced LGBTQ+ people “frequently experience continued harm,” as they flee emergency situations in their home countries, in transit to new destinations, and upon arrival in places of asylum. This includes stigmatization, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, and exclusion from access to essential services, including gender-affirming healthcare. Transgender and gender diverse people fleeing Ukraine have reported challenges crossing the border into neighboring countries when their gender or physical presentation does not correspond with legal identity documents. Gender analyses have further highlighted the risk of forced marriage among the Roma population as a result of the conflict, reinforcing multiple forms of discrimination against Roma girls, and decreasing their ability to reach out for support of authorities, who may not want to interfere with what is perceived as a “cultural practice” of an ethnic group.

Separate but related are the reports that Russian forces inside Ukraine are intentionally using sexual violence as part of their military campaign to instill fear and impose physical and psychological harm and trauma on the Ukrainian population. Sexual violence, when used to wage war on a population, takes civilian bodies and centers them as the battleground where the warfighting tactics of torture and rape take place. This results in physical and psychological harm for survivors and witnesses of the violence, and has long-term impacts on the whole population. Sexual violence as a tactic of war is systematic and intentional; it is not a crime of opportunity in a chaotic environment. Recent surveys conducted in Ukraine indicate that 93 percent of Ukrainians have heard of rape or sexual assault by the Russian or pro-Russian forces, and 20 percent say that they personally know someone who has been raped or sexually assaulted by the Russian or pro-Russian troops since the invasion started on February 24, 2022. Most reporting indicates women are the primary targets of sexual violence; however, it is important to acknowledge that younger men and boys, specifically, may be particularly at risk. Given the more rigid and traditional gender roles prevalent in Ukraine, feelings of shame, embarrassment, or emasculation may prevent boys and younger men from reporting and seeking support. Sexual violence remains one of the most hidden crimes being committed against Ukrainians in this war.

CRSV is a dynamic of the war in Ukraine that allied militaries must plan for since they will ultimately encounter survivors of CRSV. Military forces and security sector actors, including local police forces, can leverage information from gender analyses to understand vulnerability and risk factors for different subgroups of refugees and internally displaced people as well as indications and warning of CRSV and exploitation. Understanding gender and other human factors—such as ethnicity, age, gender expression, and ability status—helps militaries make sense of civilian behavior and decision-making, which can be useful information for intelligence estimates and military plans. This can help frontline military actors distinguish friendly and adversarial actors and identify survivors, especially among high-risk groups such as women, children, LGBTQ+ populations, and ethnic minorities, to ensure they can safely access services from the humanitarian response effort. While it is not the remit of military forces to provide CRSV support services for survivors, allied militaries in bordering countries will ultimately come into contact with the civilian population seeking services and support as they flee Ukraine. Allied militaries should be prepared to engage civilians appropriately with consideration for risk factors and trauma that war imposes on people and, as part of their plans, identify the process for connecting survivors with humanitarian services.

The agency of Ukrainian women

The cautionary recommendation from many gender analyses is to not make gendered assumptions that Ukrainian women and girls are all victims in need of protection. If gender analyses are oversimplified when interpreted, military actors may conclude that women are inherently victims in need of protection and the de facto intervention is that (male) military actors are charged with protecting them—rather than seeing their contributions to the war effort and factoring this into their military assistance to Ukraine. Kateryna Cherepakha, president of the organization La Strada-Ukraine, cautions against viewing women as “mere victims” in this war. Summing up her view, a Norwegian opinion piece states: “Fortifying stereotypical assumptions of women as victims only can reinforce ideas about the need for a protective culture in which women’s agency and power are belittled.”

Since 2014, the Ukrainian military has reported a dramatic increase in women in the military—a rise directly attributed to the threat posed by Russia following the annexation of Crimea and the warfighting in the Donbas. Following the 2022 Russian invasion, an unknown number of women have joined the army or volunteered for civilian resistance efforts—as they did in World War I in the Austro-Hungarian army and in World War II in the Red Army. In the fight against Russian aggression, there are accounts of women in the Ukrainian forces defending their country as snipers, combat medics, artillery officers, and in other logistics and noncombat support roles. Women’s active contributions to the defense of Ukraine, amplified through the media, should shift the narrative surrounding women’s motivations and agency within this war. Acknowledging the different motivations of women for staying in Ukraine to fight further demonstrates women are not a homogenous group, and their motivations for fighting are not solely linked to their gender roles as family caregivers or relational to men as their wives, mothers, sisters, or aunts. Women’s agency—their ability to determine and act on their own individualized goals and motivations—is a core component of this war, whether they decide to stay in or leave Ukraine.

It may seem contradictory to discuss the risks faced by women and girls in this conflict and then highlight their agency—but it is not dichotomous. This is the complexity that gender analysis illuminates and the nuance it demands of interventions—humanitarian or military—in conflict-ridden situations. Eliminating wholesale assumptions of women’s victimization and examining their motivations is a critical piece of gender dynamics in conflict. It also helps outside actors detect the different challenges facing civilian Ukrainian men. The traditionally rigid roles ascribed to Ukrainian men and women have already morphed over the course of this war and will continue to change. For allied militaries, this means embedded planning assumptions about friendly forces and the civilian population cannot remain static, and instead need to adapt to account for gender-based changes as plans for future operations are adjusted based on new intelligence.

Women’s civil society networks are saving Ukrainians

In every locality around the world, there are local networks of women—often undetected by Western media, leaders, and other outside actors—operating across their communities and making lifesaving impacts. Women’s civil society networks often have the ground truth of conflict dynamics, and access that allows them to acutely understand and provide tailored services to address the human security challenges manifesting as a result of war. For example, at the border between Ukraine and neighboring countries such as Poland and Moldova, women’s rights organizations and civil society organizations have been critical to providing localized, culturally specific and sensitive support to at-risk groups seeking refuge. These organizations have been operating at max capacity during the lead-up and throughout the 2022 Russian attack on Ukraine. They have also provided useful insights and recommendations for shaping international humanitarian and military assistance based on their knowledge of the conflict.

While humanitarian assistance efforts employ a variety of models and mechanisms for engaging local civil society, it can be understandably more challenging for military actors to ensure these insights and recommendations are considered as part of military assistance and planned operations. International and national organizations like CARE International, the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund, and the Ukrainian Women’s Fund are often helpful starting points for military actors to understand the local civil society landscape given their local networks. Some of these larger organizations also have security sector liaisons specifically dedicated to improving coordination with military and other security actors. International and national level organizations are helpful conduits for distinguishing between local organizations that are amenable to working with the military and those who do not want any real or perceived affiliation. This is an optimal way for military forces to take stock of the civil society landscape without overtaxing the local network with information requirements.

Importantly, women’s civil society organizations in Ukraine are facing their own unique challenges as a result of the war: supply chain delays, insufficient resources and capacity to meet demand, and limited access to coordination mechanisms and decision-making processes led by international actors, among others. As nonhumanitarian actors with a different mission, allied militaries may never fully map these interconnected, localized networks, yet may be operating in and around them in the same environment. It is paramount that allied militaries take steps to understand how the local network operates so that military action does not negatively impact their efforts. The key takeaway for military operators is not to replace or upend the system built and implemented by these networks, but to ensure it is sustained, continues operating, and remains informed about planned military action through appropriate intermediaries.

Recommendations

Military assistance for Ukraine has involved radar and anti-armor systems, ammunition, vehicles, and aircraft to support Ukraine’s defense of its sovereign territory. In the weeks following the Russian invasion, NATO allies bolstered allied force posture by deploying air defense, armor, and infantry forces, among other capabilities, along NATO’s eastern flank. Interestingly, no reporting describes how this support is necessary for countering the gendered impacts of Russia’s hybrid warfare, addressing instances of CRSV, understanding women as warfighters in Ukraine, or sustaining the critical role of localized civil society networks. Yet these are some of the many human security dynamics that will shape the outcomes in Ukraine and, importantly, contextualize the battlespace Ukraine’s military is currently operating in and allied militaries are observing from their deterrence posture. The recommendations below seek to help allied militaries accommodate gendered human security challenges within the context of the support they are providing for the defense of Ukraine; they are not all encompassing and should be reevaluated as the conflict evolves and new information becomes available. Notably, the tactical recommendations should not be considered the primary course of action: they represent a minimum viable capability to enable action and prevent inaction.

Tactical

Operational

Strategic

Conclusion

The NATO Strategic Concept acknowledges the important relationship of national-level decision-making to the collective security of the Alliance and Euro-Atlantic region. Right now, allies are making individual decisions to defend Ukraine because it is in the interests of European security and the collective values that bond allies together. Allied military assistance to support Ukraine’s defense of its territorial integrity is remarkable; so, too, is the ability to rapidly mobilize deterrent forces in Europe. But the security and sovereignty of Ukraine is also contingent upon the human security of Ukrainians living within its borders. Beyond the policy documents and international mandates, allied militaries have an operational responsibility to mitigate the potential impacts of military assistance and operations on civilians. They already have access to information and capabilities that enable the integration of human security considerations into military decision-making. Now allied militaries need to take the next steps to put these considerations into action for the future of Ukraine and European security.

***

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Acknowledgements

This issue brief is written and published in accordance with the Atlantic Council Policy on Intellectual Independence. The author is solely responsible for its analysis and recommendations. The Atlantic Council and its donors do not determine, nor do they necessarily endorse or advocate for, any of this issue brief’s conclusions.

This issue brief was produced under the auspices of a project conducted in partnership with Our Secure Future focused on gender and security.

Cori Fleser is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a senior specialist with Forge Group, LLC. The views expressed are her own.

About the author

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Cori Fleser

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The remarkable resilience of the Ukrainian nation has shocked and impressed many observers around the world. But those of us who live and work in Ukraine are not nearly so surprised. As the conflict approaches the six-month mark, it is important to understand that a war designed to crush Ukrainian independence has in fact resulted in a stronger, unifying Ukrainian identity centered on the principles of freedom and democracy. This is best exemplified by the mood among young Ukrainians.

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Russia’s war is not the first time Ukraine’s emerging post-Soviet generation has risen to the challenge of resisting a return to authoritarianism. In 2004, when widespread voter fraud in the country’s presidential election seemed poised to undo independent Ukraine’s hard-fought freedoms and fledgling democratic values, young Ukrainians were among the leading organizers of the Orange Revolution.

Ten years later, Ukrainian youth once again rose to the occasion, but this time as leaders of the Euromaidan Revolution following the Ukrainian government’s Kremlin-backed decision to reject an Association Agreement with the European Union. As the Russian Federation now seeks to rob Ukraine of its sovereignty, we are once again witnessing Ukrainian youth at the center of the fight for the future of their country.

This younger generation of Ukrainians born following the collapse of the USSR is leading positive change on multiple fronts including the military and civil society. Many thousands are currently serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As the war rages around them, young Ukrainians are also volunteering in large numbers to distribute humanitarian aid through digital platforms like SpivDiia that match people’s needs with resources from businesses and private individuals. 

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Young Ukrainians in government are designing cutting-edge solutions to meet emergency wartime needs. Young journalists are risking their lives to provide accurate information and document Russian war crimes. Many of these journalists have recently been recognized for their professional accomplishments, including Ukrainska Pravda Chief Editor Sevgil Hayretdın Qızı Musaieva, who was named this year by Time Magazine as one of the world’s top 100 most influential people.

Another example is Mykhailo Fedorov. The 31-year-old Minister of Digital Transformation and Ukraine’s youngest cabinet member has rallied the Ukrainian IT community and lobbied international tech companies to support Ukraine in the digital hybrid war against Russia. He is also behind the wartime adaptation of a government app that is providing social benefits to millions of internally displaced people who lost their jobs as a result of the war. Deputy Minister of Health Mariia Karchevych is another high-profile government official under 35 who is coordinating the flow of humanitarian aid throughout the country.

In addition to supporting the country’s wartime needs, young Ukrainians are also on the frontlines of the fight against Russian propaganda. From the very first days of the invasion, numerous professional and grassroots initiatives have emerged to expose the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns.

In the months and years to come, youth will remain on the Ukrainian frontlines, both literally and figuratively. They will need to play an integral part in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction, helping to shape important initiatives such as youth-friendly mental health services and educational efforts to address wartime interruptions in learning.

As the world marks International Youth Day on August 12, it is important that we recognize the contributions of young Ukrainians in government and civil society as well as in the military. And as national and international stakeholders look to rebuild Ukraine, it is also crucial that we continue supporting, listening to, and engaging this younger generation to make sure they remain at the heart of the post-war recovery process.

Ukraine’s resilient response to Russian aggression highlights the country’s commitment to democratic values and active citizen participation. It reflects a remarkable readiness to take personal responsibility for the future of the country. Amid the horrific destruction of the Russian invasion, young Ukrainians are playing a crucial role in consolidating an even stronger sense of national identity. This victory is as strategically important as any military success for the future of Ukraine’s statehood.

Mehri Druckman is IREX’s Country Director for Ukraine and Chief of Party for the USAID funded Ukraine National Identity Through Youth (UNITY) program. SpivDiia is an IREX grantee.

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Gender-based brutality in conflict is not new: Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war for centuries. In 2000, United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 mandated an increase in women’s participation and gender perspectives in all UN peace and security efforts. NATO also launched its Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. However, Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine underscores how much more the Alliance needs to do to ensure that gender perspectives are incorporated in all core tasks, policies, and practices at a time when hard security concerns can overshadow other priorities.

That recognition was at the heart of a public conversation on “Gender and Strategic Competition” held by the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and Our Secure Future on July 15. “I don’t see any other way of looking at the current strategic challenges if we do not include gender perspectives,” said Irene Fellin, NATO special representative for WPS. Fellin asserted that military policies must account for the impact of conflict on women and girls. “There can be no security if we do not look at the entire spectrum of the population,” Fellin said.

H.E. Dame Karen Pierce, DCMG, British ambassador to the United States, argued that employing a gender lens in looking at strategic competition is vital for sustainable success in conflict prevention. “When rape was used as a weapon of war in Bosnia, I remember that the [then] British prime minister sent someone to investigate,” Pierce said.

At that time, the Bosnian War was one of the few conflicts since World War II in which sexual violence was investigated as a war crime, even though instances of rape and sexual assault had been reported in most other conflicts too. Yet, today, Russian troops are using the same tactics in Ukraine—a strategy Soviet soldiers are also known to have employed during their invasion of Afghanistan. Alluding to the Bucha massacre, Fellin added that NATO needs to “change its approach and focus on prevention” of sexual violence in conflict rather than simply acknowledging that it occurs. To that end, utilizing the WPS agenda in NATO’s strategies is critical.
Pierce also referred to the economic implications of incorporating women and gender concerns into security planning. “Fundamentally, if you don’t empower half of your population, you are not going to thrive as a country,” she said. Case studies have demonstrated that involving women in peace processes contributes to sustainable peace agreements.

NATO can use its place as a standard-bearer of multilateral security cooperation to also lead by example in embedding gender perspectives into its policies and strategies, the speakers suggested. One way to do that could be to consult more with women in civil society, Fellin said.

Oftentimes, high-level meetings at the NATO or the UN are distant from the general population of a country. That needs to change in order to truly account for women’s perspectives that are reflective of entire populations, according to the speakers. When asked about how the Alliance and individual member states should implement the concepts from the WPS agenda into their core tasks, Fellin remarked that “security [policies] start at home… what we bring abroad is a reflection of our values [and we have to show others that we value gender perspectives in our security policies].” As NATO looks to translate its new Strategic Concept into action, it would be imperative to include gender perspectives to foster sustainable policies.

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The juxtaposition of the Taliban’s evident and continuing support for international terrorism and the violation of the most fundamental rights of women and others justifies a next step in demonstrating global rejection of what they stand for: The United Nations (UN) travel-ban waiver, which has allowed Taliban leaders to leave Afghanistan, should be rescinded when it comes up for review by the UN Security Council in mid-August. 

While declarations of outrage over human-rights violations and lack of cooperation on terrorism may feel good, all of us during our service in Afghanistan have learned that statements unsupported by actions are generally ignored. Hence, it is imperative that the United States and its partners link actions to words. 

Taliban leaders are encased in their own beliefs, focused inward. They have made it clear that they have no intention of changing their basic orientations on issues of core interest to the United States and most others in the international community. While there do seem to be different views within Taliban ranks on the issue of girls’ education, the hardliners are able to bolster their arguments on reactionary ideology by arguing that the international community can be ignored because it doesn’t act with impact. 

In fact, since the West did not react in a meaningful way to the closure of girls’ schools, continues to provide humanitarian aid (as it should), and is negotiating to reopen an Afghan central bank, many Taliban leaders may feel that the West is moving toward greater acceptance on the Taliban’s terms despite its refusal to respect women’s rights or broaden representation in its government, and its continuing support for terrorist groups. 

Clearly, taking strong, meaningful action against these abuses is not easy. Having pulled out of Afghanistan, the United States has given up most of the tools of pressure, leaving it with limited influence. On moral grounds, the United States does not wish to see a greater humanitarian disaster, so it needs to continue relief measures. The United States cannot starve the Afghan people to pressure the Taliban.

Equally, there is a strong argument to be made for maintaining engagement with the Taliban—for example, to continue helping citizens who worked with the United States to leave the country. If possible, the United States needs to find ways to address the disastrous economic situation that the World Bank and others highlight, without legitimizing or strengthening the Taliban. The United States needs to send clear and direct warnings against any tolerance and support for terrorist groups. In sum, the United States needs to communicate with the Taliban because that is the basic element of diplomacy, not only now but in the future if the Taliban begins to show more flexibility on the many issues of concern to the United States and the international community. 

Yet notwithstanding the need to support and protect the Afghan people through continued engagement, the United States still must find actions that make its words meaningful.

One of the few available actions is to end the waiver of the UN travel ban. The Security Council originally waived the ban in 2019 to allow senior Taliban representatives to travel for peace negotiations. But the Taliban now takes advantage of it to allow its leaders to take business-class jaunts to multiple foreign capitals and conferences in efforts to bolster their perceived legitimacy. 

When the Security Council renewed the waiver two months ago, it excluded two Taliban education officials who are now subject to the ban once again. While these exclusions were supposed to be a symbolic reaction to the closing of high schools to girls, the symbolism was pathetic: The two officials were among the most junior of Taliban officials and were known to be among those most sympathetic to opening girls’ schools. This minor wrist slap failed to convey any sense of seriousness from the United States or the international community.

The extension of the travel ban waiver comes up for renewal in the Security Council on August 20. The United States should lead in objecting to the extension, thereby reinstating the ban. Admittedly, closing off travel by itself is unlikely to cause the Taliban to make major changes; but it would begin to shift the sense that the United States and its partners on the Security Council are not serious enough. It would convey that the international community is losing patience. 

Reinforcement with other actions would be useful, if such can be found, especially as the Taliban’s haven for al-Qaeda has now been exposed. For the moment, reimposing the travel ban is one of the very few actions available.

Some will argue that reapplying the ban will cut off engagement, but this need not be so. First, it only applies to a dozen or so senior Taliban officials. Other officials could still engage internationally. Online engagement is also still available, as is the option to continue talks for international bodies in Kabul, such as the UN mission for Afghanistan. Also, the travel ban has a provision for requesting specific waivers. Further, a new ban could be designed with an exception for travel to Doha, Qatar, where most of the engagement takes place. And if it is in Washington’s interest, US diplomats traveling to Afghanistan could still pursue engagement with the Taliban.

Another argument against reimposing the ban is that some regional states will not respect it. The Russians, for one, may well ignore it. So what? The Taliban leadership will still be dealing with the embarrassment of not being able to show up in European and major Asian capitals, while states that violate the ban can also be embarrassed by criticism. Allowing the possibility of incomplete success to cripple US decision-making would be a mistake. If the United States can only act when certain of success, it will act very little.

There are many issues worth considering when figuring out how to approach the Taliban: terrorism, women and girls, Special Immigrant Visas, and the economy. Yet while there are many steps to consider, if the United States doesn’t take this one, there may not be a next step with impact. 

We cannot escape the hard truth that the United States’ poorly devised agreement with the Taliban and ill-judged decision to unilaterally leave Afghanistan created this situation. Now, the United States must show that its multilateral leadership still matters and that it will be committed to the long, hard slog to create a better reality in Afghanistan.

The bottom line remains: If the United States cannot find any actions to support its words, then its words are hollow. The women of Afghanistan will remain unsupported, and the terrorist threats emanating from Afghanistan will remain—no matter what Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US and partner nation officials say. 

Reimposing the travel ban is one of the few actions the United States can take to show that it’s serious. It should use this opportunity.

Ambassador James Cunningham was US ambassador and deputy representative to the United Nations (1999-2004), US ambassador to Israel (2008-11), and US deputy ambassador and ambassador to Afghanistan (2011-2014). He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker was the US ambassador to Afghanistan 2011-12. He was also ambassador to Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon.

Ambassador Hugo Llorens was US assistant chief of mission in Afghanistan (2012-2013) and special charge d’affairs (2016-2017), as well as ambassador to Honduras.

Ambassador P. Michael McKinley was US deputy ambassador and ambassador to Afghanistan (2013-2016), as well as ambassador to Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. He is a nonresident senior adviser at CSIS.

Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann was US ambassador to Afghanistan (2005-2007) as well as ambassador to Algeria and Bahrain. He is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne was US deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and coordinating director for development (2009-2011), as well as ambassador to Mexico and Argentina. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Council’s GeoEconomics Center, a diplomat in residence at American University’s School of International Service, and co-chair of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute board.

The post It’s time to block Taliban leaders’ trips abroad appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Over the past eight years of hostilities with Russia, Ukrainian civil society has gained invaluable experience and become highly skilled at satisfying the often complex and urgent needs of the country’s armed forces. This has led to the development of semi-formal networks that often operate in close coordination with different military units. 

While key military aid such as artillery and missile systems can only be delivered at the interstate level, it would also make sense to develop cooperation between Ukrainian civil society and the country’s international partners. Civil society has demonstrated since 2014 that it is extremely effective at accomplishing the kinds of small but essential tasks that can keep an army functioning in the field while overcoming the challenges that routinely emerge during time of war.

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The skills Ukraine’s civil society activists can offer are particularly applicable to today’s often extreme environment. While the international community seeks to keep Ukraine militarily well-supplied with sophisticated weapons, the experience of the country’s civil society sector can help make sure that surges in military capacity take place smoothly and core needs are met.  

It is important to understand that Ukrainian civil society has evolved into an unrivalled platform that offers direct access to fighting units and other aspects of the country’s military. This includes the ability to compile accurate information about the most immediate and pressing needs of frontline forces.

Activists are also highly adept at acting on this information. Given the right resources, they can often reduce lead times to days or even hours. In addition to the obvious practical advantages of such efficiency, rapid response times also provide frontline troops with a massive morale boost and strengthen the bonds between the military and the country’s civilian volunteers. In this time of grave national danger, such ties are priceless.

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As somebody who has witnessed the evolving frontline role of Ukrainian civil society over the past eight years, I am confident that greater cooperation with Ukraine’s international partners would pay dividends. Ukraine would be able to fully utilize the informal but extensive networks that are already in place while also making the most of the experience built up over years of diverse wartime activity. Indeed, combining enhanced Western resources with the unique aptitudes of Ukrainian civil society could have a significant impact on the future course of the entire conflict.

There is long history of successful international engagement with civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. During the post-Soviet era, Ukraine’s own civil society has often led the way in terms of international cooperation and has consistently been at the forefront of the country’s gradual transition from authoritarianism toward a more recognizably democratic society.

In today’s wartime environment, the contributions being made by Ukrainian civil society are immediately apparent. In addition to the important role they play in support of the military, volunteer groups also often lead the way when it comes to providing humanitarian support to Ukrainians who find themselves displaced or traumatized by the conflict. This is another area where much closer cooperation at the governmental and international levels is not only possible but desirable.

Ukraine’s civil society sector is a key force for positive change with a proven record of achieving results. It is an asset that should be far more actively supported by the country’s international partners. This support could take the form of financial grants, aid partnerships, training initiatives, distribution cooperation and much more.

With no immediate end in sight to the war, the international community must plan for an open-ended commitment to supporting Ukraine. This will necessarily involve ongoing arms supplies and financial backing. Looking ahead, Western support will go a lot further if Ukraine’s partners take advantage of the remarkable civil society infrastructure that is already in place. 

Jonas Oehman is head of the NGO Blue/Yellow in Lithuania which has been supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 2, 2022

Putin’s entire Ukraine invasion hinges on the coming Battle of Kherson

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s much anticipated counter-offensive in the south of the country is now gathering momentum with many observers predicting that the looming Battle of Kherson will decide the fate of Vladimir Putin’s entire invasion.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Jun 17, 2022

Unholy War: UK sanctions Putin’s Patriarch for backing Ukraine invasion

By Taras Kuzio

This week’s UK decision to impose sanctions on the head of the Russian Orthodox Church highlights international alarm over Patriarch Kirill’s enthusiastic support for Vladimir Putin’s war of imperial aggression in Ukraine.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Jul 21, 2022

Russian gas attack: Europe must not give in to Putin’s energy blackmail

By Diane Francis

The CEO of Ukrainian energy giant Naftogaz has told European leaders to prepare for a complete Russian gas cut off and warned that any concessions to the Kremlin will only serve to encourage further energy blackmail.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Ukrainian civil society can play a key role in securing victory over Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Zelenska’s Vogue portraits were taken by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz, with the First Lady captured alone and together with her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Leibovitz’s photos of Ukraine’s presidential couple are instantly iconic and have proved a viral sensation on social media. Zelenska’s appearance in Vogue has also sparked controversy, with some critics branding the decision tone-deaf at a time when the entire Ukrainian nation is fighting for survival.

Predictably, much of this criticism has come from Russia itself and from pro-Kremlin voices in the West, with numerous commentators pointing to Zelenska’s Vogue appearance as evidence that the scale of the war in Ukraine has been somehow exaggerated. Nor has the backlash been limited to Ukraine’s geopolitical adversaries. Many Ukrainians have also voiced their unease over the images, with some accusing their country’s First Lady of engaging in inappropriate PR.

These negative responses to Zelenska’s Vogue interview are understandable but short-sighted. Crucially, they fail to recognize the importance of keeping Ukraine in the international headlines and misunderstand the nature of Olena Zelenska’s role as the First Lady of a country that finds itself at war with a superpower. An attention-grabbing photo shoot with a global media brand is a smart move by Zelenska that plays to Ukraine’s strengths and enhances the country’s ability to punch well above its weight in the information war against Russia. At a time when scenes of death and destruction in Ukraine have lost the power to shock, she offers a compelling personal perspective that brings home the reality of the war to outside observers.

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The battle for global opinion is one of the most important fronts in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine’s ability to defend itself depends heavily on the continued flow of Western arms and money, which in turn can only be assured as long as public opinion throughout the democratic world remains firmly on Ukraine’s side. This cannot be taken for granted.

With Russia’s invasion now in its sixth month, a degree of Ukraine fatigue has already begun to set in and international media coverage of the war has noticeably declined. As attention turns elsewhere, Western leaders will find it more and more challenging to prioritize support for Ukraine or enforce sanctions measures that call for sacrifices from their own electorates.

Russia is well aware of this and is actively working on the information front to undermine Western resolve. Moscow’s clumsy initial efforts to portray the invasion as an anti-Nazi crusade have now been largely abandoned in favor of a subtler narrative that highlights the supposed futility of arming Ukraine while stressing the need to end the fighting. The Kremlin hopes this seemingly sensible message will resonate with jaded Western audiences and lead to mounting pressure on Kyiv to accept a compromise peace.

The consequences for Ukraine could be calamitous. Ukrainians are well aware that any ceasefire at this point would allow the Kremlin to consolidate its grip over regions in the south and east of the country that have been occupied since February 2022, while also potentially paving the way for the next stage of Russia’s campaign to extinguish Ukrainian statehood. This is why it is so important to keep the invasion in the news and underline the maximalist nature of Russia’s war aims. Zelenska’s Vogue appearance succeeded on both counts.

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Even the most vocal of critics would have to concede that the Ukrainian First Lady’s Vogue portraits have attracted a lot of attention. This was achieved without resorting to sensationalism. On the contrary, Annie Leibovitz’s images are stunning yet authentic, capturing the emotional bond between Zelenska and her husband in a manner that also reflects the gravity of the circumstances and the life-changing experiences of the past five months.

Perhaps the most striking image of all features Zelenska seated alone on some steps inside an anonymous government building against a backdrop of sandbags that serves as a jarring reminder of the war. With elbows resting on knees, She stares straight ahead into the camera with an unaffected intensity that suggests both strength and exhaustion. It is a superb portrait that goes beyond traditional war reporting in its ability to communicate Ukraine’s deep trauma and the country’s remarkable resilience.

Zelenska is undeniably photogenic but her recent public appearances have allowed her to demonstrate that she is much more than just a pretty face. The Ukrainian First Lady clearly has much to say and uses her Vogue interview effectively to put the horrors of the Russian invasion into a relatable human context. “The first weeks after the war broke out we were just shocked,” she recounts at one point. “After Bucha we understood it was a war intended to exterminate us all. A war of extermination.”

As a wife and mother who has never courted publicity and famously preferred to remain backstage during her husband’s showbiz career, Zelenska enjoys a degree of authenticity that few politicians can match. This makes it possible for her to reach audiences that would be unlikely to engage with more traditional political messaging. She is now taking full advantage of this credibility to share Ukraine’s story with the outside world.  

Ukraine is hopelessly outgunned on the information front and cannot hope to match Russia’s resources. But while the Kremlin can count on multi-billion dollar budgets along with extensive networks of contacts and sympathizers throughout the ranks of the Western establishment, Ukraine has the priceless advantage of truth on its side. The key task now facing Kyiv is to keep Ukraine in the global spotlight and continue communicating with as wide an audience as possible.

If Ukraine can maintain current levels of public engagement and support, the country has a good chance of achieving an historic victory over Russia. In the potentially decisive battle to shape international opinion, First Lady Olena Zelenska may well be Ukraine’s secret weapon.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 30, 2022

Goodwill gestures and de-Nazification: Decoding Putin’s Ukraine War lexicon

By Peter Dickinson

From “goodwill gestures” to “de-Nazification” and “reclaiming Russian lands,” the Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickinson decodes some of the key phrases from the lexicon of Putin’s Ukraine War into plain English.

Central Asia Conflict

UkraineAlert Jul 28, 2022

Putin believed his own propaganda and fatally underestimated Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin likes to pose as an expert on all things Ukrainian but in reality his understanding of Ukraine is hopelessly distorted by propaganda that has led him to fatally underestimate Ukrainian resilience.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jul 18, 2022

Canada accused of betraying Ukraine and helping Russia break sanctions

By Diane Francis

Canada is facing accusations of bowing to Kremlin blackmail after agreeing to lift sanctions imposed over Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion in order to secure Russian gas supplies to Germany.

Conflict Economic Sanctions

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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A collection of Ukrainian volunteers and internationals sort donations from European Union countries into piles. From the 4,000 square foot warehouse in Poland’s ninth largest city, trucks take the wrapped pallets to Lviv in western Ukraine for distribution across the war-torn country.

Help Ukraine Center, the brainchild of Ukrainian businessman Andrey Stavnitser and friends, opened a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Stavnitser works with Rozetka, the Ukrainian equivalent of Amazon, and Nova Poshta, the country’s version of DHL, to deliver packages to specific addresses free of charge or to deliver donated humanitarian aid to Ukrainians in need.

One slow day in June, four small children of volunteers weave in and out of wrapped pallets, alternating between a game of tag and swiping a handful of cookies when the watchful eyes of the women who run the Help Center are looking away.   

In “Little Shanghai,” as the first section of the warehouse is known, female volunteers create personalized hygiene boxes for Ukrainian women. The Help Center sent specially prepared boxes with letters plus comfort items for victims of rape in Irpin. 

In “Big Shanghai,” a new influx of volunteers from the British first responder organization RE:ACT has just arrived, sorting bedding and towels. They are mostly retirees, but no one can keep pace with them. A short woman who works silently and diligently catches my eye. Tamara turned up at the Help Center in a bathrobe from Mariupol, the largest of the many Ukrainian cities obliterated by Vladimir Putin’s invasion force. The Help Center outfitted her with clothing. She now comes every day to help sort aid packages.       

The soundtrack is a mix of duct tape, determination, laughter and light rock.  

“They were so busy they couldn’t keep up [in March],” says Colton Smith, a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz who quit his job and moved to Poland to help. Smith says compassion fatigue is real and visible at the warehouse.  

Donations are down 80 percent since the Center opened but the needs of Ukrainians are only increasing. The UNDP estimates that 9 of 10 Ukrainians will be in poverty by the end of the year if the war doesn’t stop. In February, 15 trucks came every day. Now only two to three trucks turn up.

Part of the problem is simple logistics. “We can’t plan our work,” says Olga Rudnieva, the ultra-efficient director of Help Ukraine Center. At first, people would drive the goods in for free, then they wanted fuel covered, and now it costs EUR 3,000 for a truck. “Drivers hate Poland,” she comments. The queues are impossibly long, sometimes stretching for five days.

The Help Center needs to borrow or buy a 20-ton truck for around EUR 20,000 to step up its deliveries. Approximately 100 pallets sit and await delivery. “Those shouldn’t be here,” Olga says.

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The Help Center is one of the largest NGOs in Poland for Ukrainians and has immediate needs.

The long-time Ukrainian cook at the Help Center has to leave. Ukrainians are famous for their hospitality, and the Help Center is a small microcosm of Ukraine. Cookies, coffee and biscuits cover two large tables for volunteers. In the improvised “kitchen,” two women make vats of borscht and rolls to feed the 23 volunteers at the warehouse.  

The Help Center also requests generators for hospitals, simple canned food like tuna, non-perishable food like pasta and beans that can be cooked quickly, and energy bars.

“One of our biggest problems is that volunteers leave,” Rudnieva says. Most volunteers come for a few weeks and some for a few months, all on their own nickel. While hugely appreciated, a Michelin star chef who was between jobs was the only forklift driver in the warehouse and had to teach his replacement how to drive over FaceTime.

Rudnieva has bigger problems. She worries that the world is moving on. Ukraine no longer makes the front pages of newspapers or commands the media attention that it once did. “People have to understand that the war is not over. We don’t want to make headlines with another Bucha or Irpin,” Rudnieva says with a grimace.

Before I dash out into the driving rain and head back to my hotel, Lasha Shikhashvili, an ethnic Georgian but longtime resident of Kyiv and father of three, wants to talk. He left four days before the war started and comes to the Help Center because “mentally it helps.”

“All of this war will come to peaceful life,” predicts Shikhashvili, who lived through war in Georgia in the 90s. He worries about the long-term effects of the war including domestic violence, suicide and violence in society, and urges donors to focus on mental health.

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Help Ukraine Center also gave birth to new initiatives. The special alchemy between Rudnieva, the director, and Stavnitser, the CEO and initiator of the warehouse, is apparent.

Stavnitser and Rudnieva have no time for endless working group meetings about Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction or posturing for a big job once the war is over. They are impatient and ruthlessly focused on results. They see a problem they can fix, break it down, and attack it.    

One example is the support being offered to the many women serving in the Ukrainian armed forces. Women soldiers in the Ukrainian army have long complained that uniforms do not fit. They are still issued with men’s underwear and the army’s large backpacks give them back pain. Gynecologists weren’t available on the frontlines for years.

Stavnitser, Rudnieva and other volunteers are revamping women’s uniforms. On Rudnieva’s iPhone she shows me attractive military green sports bras that will soon be produced in Ukraine. She is also working to get medicine to combat yeast and bladder infections for women in the trenches, which are the most common problems female soldiers face.  

Stavnitser recently flew to Turkey and found smaller uniforms that fit women. He also purchased 500 ultralight Kevlar vests that are only 2.6 kilos and more comfortable for women.

This is how Ukrainians solve problems. For years, Ukraine’s youngish businesspeople and activists have turned heads with their moxie and can-do spirit. The Help Ukraine Center is no exception. Its website proudly proclaims that the entire endeavor receives no government support.

It is these local organizations like Help Ukraine Center, Lifeline Ukraine, and Razom, that we should be supporting, not the bloated international organizations with snazzy billboards in European cities. A recent report sponsored by the British government found that while UN agencies and international NGOs received 87 percent of humanitarian funding for Ukraine following the Russian invasion, local NGOs had provided almost all of the humanitarian aid. 

As I finally wave goodbye to Rudnieva and prepare to leave, Shikhashvili stops me. He has been eavesdropping and says my language is all wrong. “We don’t want to fix Ukraine. Ukraine is fixing the world,” Shikhashvili observes.

Melinda Haring is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. She tweets @melindaharing.

Editor’s note: To volunteer, please contact the Help Ukraine Center: https://helpukraine.center/

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 24, 2022

Putin’s Mariupol Massacre is one of the 21st century’s worst war crimes

By Paul Niland

The Russian destruction of Mariupol ranks among the gravest crimes against humanity of the twenty-first century and sends a clear message to the international community that can be no compromise peace with Putin.

Conflict Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert May 27, 2022

South Ukraine holds the key to Putin’s dreams of a new Russian Empire

By Taras Kuzio

The biggest European battles since WWII are currently raging in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region but the ultimate outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian War is likely to be decided hundreds of miles to the south.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jun 10, 2022

Putin admits Ukraine invasion is an imperial war to “return” Russian land

By Peter Dickinson

By abandoning all pretense and comparing himself to Peter the Great, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has confirmed that he is waging an old-fashioned imperial war of conquest with the goal of annexing Ukrainian land.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The move was hailed as an “historic victory for women’s rights in Ukraine” by Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard. “This decision could not be more timely amid disturbing reports and allegations of sexual violence against Ukrainian women in Russian-occupied territories,” commented Callamard. “Prompt implementation should equip the Ukrainian authorities to deal with these atrocities, and serve to reassure the survivors and give them confidence to seek justice.”

For many Ukrainians, ratification is seen as long overdue. Ukraine signed the Istanbul Convention more than a decade ago in 2011. This landmark human rights treaty was then ratified by a long list of European countries but the process stalled in Ukraine itself.

The first attempt to ratify the Istanbul Convention came in 2016 but fell short due to a lack of support from Ukrainian MPs. Commenting on this failure, some MPs made reference to concerns among religious organizations such as the Council of Churches over the use of the word “gender” in the text of the Convention. This was particularly disappointing as Ukrainian anti-discrimination and labor laws had employed the same terminology since 2005. 

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Non-ratification in 2016 sparked calls for Ukrainian civil society to engage with MPs on gender-related topics in order to address outdated stereotypes. However, the setback also highlighted disquiet within some conservative segments of Ukrainian society over changing attitudes toward gender issues and consequent fears among MPs that support for progressive legislation could ultimately cost them votes.

Despite these traditionalist concerns, some steps were taken to address the problem of domestic violence by introducing changes to the Criminal Code of Ukraine and adopting a range of other measures. Innovations included the creation of dedicated response teams within Ukrainian law enforcement focused specifically on domestic violence.

This progress was seen as welcome but insufficient. Meanwhile, many continued to press for ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Petitions addressing the president on the issue garnered considerable support, while demands to ratify the Convention became a key feature of Ukraine’s annual Women’s March and other events promoting women’s rights.

With calls growing in Ukrainian society for greater efforts to combat domestic and gender-based violence, bastions of social conservatism have been forced to acknowledge the need for more action. While some religious groups have continued to oppose ratification, recent declarations have mentioned efforts to create shelters for survivors of domestic violence. 

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Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022 dramatically altered the context underpinning the debate over ratification of the Istanbul Convention. While some sections of Ukrainian society remain suspicious of progressive approaches to family and gender issues, the need to demonstrate Ukraine’s commitment to the core European values of equality and human rights has become paramount.

It is no coincidence that ratification finally took place just days before European Union leaders are due to convene in Brussels to discuss granting Ukraine EU candidate nation status. Clearly, Ukraine is eager to underline the fact that it shares the EU commitment to combating domestic violence and deserves to be recognized as a potential future member state.

Ukraine’s EU candidate bid has bolstered earlier efforts by Ukrainian civil society to promote ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Ukrainian feminists, human rights activists, lawyers, and NGOs all made vital contributions.

While geopolitical factors appear to have played a significant role in the timing of ratification, the ultimate beneficiaries will be ordinary Ukrainians. Ratifying the Istanbul Convention will help create a whole new framework reducing the potential for domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence. Ukrainian women will be better protected and perpetrators will stand a far greater chance of facing justice.

Iryna Slavinska is Executive Producer at Radio Culture.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 20, 2022

Time for EU leaders to honor Ukraine’s long fight for a European future

By Mark Temnycky

Ukraine hopes to receive official EU candidate nation status this week as the country’s long struggle for a European future enters a new phase while Ukrainian forces continue to defend against Russian invasion.

Conflict Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert Jun 19, 2022

EU candidate status for Ukraine is the ideal response to Russian aggression

By Diane Francis

European Union leaders must decide this week whether to grant Ukraine official EU candidate nation status. This is a critically important moment for Ukrainians that will also shape the future direction of the entire continent.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jun 10, 2022

Putin admits Ukraine invasion is an imperial war to “return” Russian land

By Peter Dickinson

By abandoning all pretense and comparing himself to Peter the Great, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has confirmed that he is waging an old-fashioned imperial war of conquest with the goal of annexing Ukrainian land.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post “Historic victory for women’s rights”: Ukraine ratifies Istanbul Convention appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Balance of power: Promoting more women in leadership featured keynote welcome remarks by US Mission to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Chargé d’Affaires Martina Strong, welcome remarks by KPMG in Saudi Arabia and Levant Chairman and CEO Dr. Abdullah Al Fozan, and a panel moderated by Entrepreneur Middle East Managing Editor Tamara Pupic featuring PepsiCo Human Resources Director Rima Al Soraihi, Cisco Vice President for Middle East and Africa Reem Asaad, Boeing Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor Leanne Caret, and UPS President for International Public Affairs and Sustainability Penelope “Penny” Naas.

This was the first in a series of four events for the WIn (Women Innovators) Fellowship, led by the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative in cooperation with Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and with support from US Embassy Riyadh, PepsiCo, and UPS.

The key points from the discussion are summarized below.

Challenges for aspiring and established women leaders:

• While celebrating the “amazing change” that has taken place over the past six years in Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Al Fozan stressed that “the women’s empowerment movement is new here in Saudi.” He added that Saudi women only entered the professional services industry in 2007, but after a “challenging journey” over three hundred women are now part of KPMG’s national workforce.
• Rima Al Soraihi identified “lack of mobility,” particularly due to caregiving obligations and family restrictions, as “one of the biggest challenges that women are facing” that limit their labor force participation in Saudi Arabia. Gender discrimination and exclusion of women from decision making processes are additional barriers; Al Soraihi advised women facing the latter to ask male colleagues to recap key conversations until eventually they are included.
• Reem Asaad argued that barriers to women in leadership “are not specifically a Saudi issue, but more of a global issue,” and Leanne Caret concurred that “more times than not, the conversations are identical” in Europe, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.
• Asaad pointed to three obstacles that can contribute to the disparity between the amount of women holding entry-level positions versus senior roles. First, age-old stereotypes about women’s leadership styles persist: women are perceived as “confrontational, aggressive, too emotional, or weak.” Second, unconscious bias can hinder women’s professional growth, especially since research indicates that “in many cases for career progression men are judged based on their potential, whereas women are judged on their past performance.” Third, women have a responsibility to “take a moment to look within” and identify ways they might hold themselves back, in order to challenge the limitations of societal and cultural conditioning.
• Caret emphasized the importance of top leadership representing the organization’s entire workforce and the community in which they work: “We can talk all day about how we believe in inclusivity, diversity, and equity, but if the leadership doesn’t reflect that type of a world, then you’re not going to believe that it exists for you.” Boeing’s work has yielded positive results, as minority representation has increased since the start of the pandemic, and 2021 was the first year in decades that women have not left the workforce at a higher rate than men.

Role of the public and private sectors in driving change:

• Penny Naas explained that setting mandates on gender representation in countries like Saudi Arabia can be “really impactful in shifting cultural norms.” She commented that “the threat of quotas on boards has really moved the needle in a lot of countries,” and a similar government policy in Saudi Arabia “might be very helpful” for companies to realize it is in their best interest to have diverse boards. However, she cautioned that another focus must be structuring systems to attract “the best talent for the job” because women will struggle to feel a sense of belonging and to advance in their careers if they are not a good fit and have simply satisfied a quota.
• Asaad said that while the private sector “should hold itself to account” and provides expertise that shapes government policy, it is the public sector that “in many ways often sets the tone.” She highlighted how Saudi Arabia is “leading the way” with its Vision 2030 goal to increase women’s labor force participation from 22 percent to 30 percent. The private sector is following suit, including the Arab Institute for Women’s Empowerment, which recently announced its plan to invest in training Saudi women, which is expected to have a “return on investment of $400 billion by 2030.” Asaad also praised the UAE Gender Balance Council as “setting a great example of how businesses should work.”
• Al Fozan stressed the “power of legislation” when first established by the government and then applied to a company-specific context. From 2015 to 2020, he oversaw an internal version of the Nitaqat program, which resulted in a boost in nationalization from 20 percent to 42 percent. He also set a quota for women’s representation at KPMG; the firm now has ten female directors and three female partners.

Top leadership skills that women must develop:

• Noting the global period of transition and prime opportunity for innovation during the pandemic, Naas stressed that women should align with “the people who are ready for the change” and who will “help build your confidence and your career,” while purposefully disregarding the opinions of “the people you’re never going to be able to convince.” Naas also underlined that humor can be used to “disarm situations” that are potentially demeaning to women to “take back the power, elevate your status, and be seen as a leader.”
• In order to reach their full potential, Asaad advised aspiring women leaders to practice self-belief and “become your own champion”; “learn to ask for help” and as a byproduct, expand your professional network; and “continue learning at every stage of your career.”
• Al Soraihi highlighted the need to “own your career” by taking initiative to create and add value, asking for critical experiences and for support in developing new skills, and quickly adapting to change as multinational corporations continue to evolve.
• Caret shared the “Four G’s” that have been imperative throughout her career: grit (being known for delivering on your commitments); gumption (transcending imposter syndrome to put yourself out there); grace (giving yourself and others a break, which then dictates how others treat you); and gratitude (how you comport yourself and thank others).

Strategies to ensure more women reach leadership positions:

• Reflecting on the success of PepsiCo’s global Work That Works program, Al Soraihi advised companies to offer “greater flexibility on where or how work can happen,” so that women and mothers in particular have the option to telework. Caret added that organizations should give both men and women the option “to step away from their careers” and come back later without starting over completely.
• Asaad stressed that formal mentorship programs are “one of the underused and underrated resources” for aspiring women leaders, while Caret emphasized that informal, casual mentorship from colleagues outside of your traditional reporting structure can also have a profound impact. According to Naas, sponsorship is another key tool, and having more than one advocate at talent discussions can propel your career forward.
• Caret emphasized that it is crucial to have women in leadership “who can identify microaggressions and call them out” and women on hiring teams to ensure highly-educated women graduates—who are now the majority—join the workforce, especially in STEM fields.
• Pupic lauded the critical role that male allies play in championing women’s advancement to leadership roles, while Naas cautioned that “we need to bring men with us” so they see women’s empowerment as “expanding the pie as opposed to swapping out a piece of the pie.” Research reveals that across the G7 countries, the people who support female leadership the least are men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five.
• Ultimately, empowering more women to reach positions of senior management and leadership is “a business imperative,” according to Caret, who cited that diverse boards lead more profitable companies. Asaad concurred that “it’s not just about moral duty or diversity and inclusion—it’s really about economic prosperity for a nation.”

Allison Holle is assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative. Follow her @AllisonHolle.

The post Promoting more women in leadership is “a business imperative” and key to unlocking economic prosperity, say top executives appeared first on Atlantic Council.