Book Launch – WPS in Afghanistan: Resistance and Resilience

Please join us for the launch of the first book to explore the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda in Afghanistan.

This book is authored by CEVAW’s Dr Farkhondeh Akbari and Professor Jacqui true, and published by De Gruyter Brill. It examines how Afghan women’s activism has reshaped the fight for rights and freedom. Through feminist pragmatist grounded normative theorising, this book makes visible Afghan women’s diverse voices, strategies, and lived realities across war, peace, and politics. From international military interventions and peacemaking deals to current engagement and non-engagement with the Taliban, this book is an urgent call to recognise and support women’s agency in the face of oppression.

Discover how Afghan women continue to shape the WPS agenda through local and transnational advocacy.

Register here

Panellists at the launch include:

Dr Farkhondeh Akbari

Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Monash University. Farkhondeh holds a Ph.D. in Diplomatic Studies from the Australian National University and an Advanced Master’s in Diplomacy. Her research explores non-state armed actors’ diplomacy, feminist foreign policy, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda in conflict zones. Her doctoral work examined peace negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. A committed activist, she co-founded a grassroots NGO advancing women’s empowerment and inclusive peace in Afghanistan.

Professor Jacqui True

Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Monash University. Jacqui is Professor of International Relations and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). Her research focuses on gendered political violence, feminist political economy, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda. She is the author of Hidden Wars: Gendered Violence in Asia’s Civil Conflicts (2024) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace and Security (2019). In 2021, she was named by Apolitical as one of the top 100 global experts on gender policy for gender-based violence.

Professor Bina D’Costa

Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), Australian National University. Bina is an ARC Future Fellow and Chief Investigator at CEVAW, and currently serves as a UN Special Procedures Mandate Holder with the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent. Her research focuses on displaced children’s protection in global humanitarian emergencies, including trafficking, child marriage, and gender justice. She has worked with UNICEF, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and civil society justice initiatives across Asia. Her books include Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia and Children and the Politics of Violence.

Dr Jasmine Westendorf

Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict, University of Melbourne. Jasmine is Co-Director of the Initiative for Peacebuilding and an ARC DECRA Fellow. Her research focuses on sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. She is the author of Violating Peace: Sex, Aid and Peacekeeping (Cornell University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peacekeeping and Aid: Critiquing the Past, Plotting the Future (Bristol University Press, 2024).