PhD, Columbia University
Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh is a university professor, researcher and international consultant specializing in human security, prevention of violent extremism, counter-terrorism and peacebuilding with geographic specialization in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran. She teaches Master's Level courses on Human Security (since 2003) as well as courses on Understanding and Responding to Radicalization (since 2018) at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies, Paris). She has also taught at SIPA at Columbia University, School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and has been a visiting professor at universities in Tehran, Kabul, New Delhi, Pretoria, Moscow and Dushanbe. Between 2010 and 2016 she was a researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) working on the regional security complex around Afghanistan. She founded a Center for Peace and Human Security at Sciences Po (2004-2008) and launched the first peer-reviewed, student run journal there, the Journal of Human Security (until 2008). She is currently preparing a textbook based on the course on Understanding Violent Extremism which she teaches at Sciences Po and at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.
Dr. Tadjbakhsh has also had an extensive career with the United Nations, both as staff in the 1990s at UNDP and since 2003 as a consultant conducting various trainings, evaluations and writing strategies on the themes of Prevention of Violent Extremism, Peacebuilding and Human Security with UNOCT, UNRCCA, OSCE, OHCHR, UNICEF, UN Women and UNDP etc.
She has since 2017 collaborated on numerous projects for the OSCE on preventing violent extremism that leads to terrorism, including on conducting training for journalists and the youth on countering the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes through alternative narratives. She contributed to the preparation of the OSCE Guidebook for Central Asia on a Whole of Society Approach to Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Radicalization that Lead to Terrorism. In recent years she has collaborated with UN Country Teams in designing projects on human security and the pandemic (Turkmenistan) and on Technology-facilitated gender-based violence against women (Egypt). For UNDP, she conducting evaluations of the Prevention of Violent Extremism Projects in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Her most recent work has to do with developing a Rights Based approach to evaluating the programmes of the governments of Central Asia in returning, rehabilitating and reintegrating former fighters and their families from war zones of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan for OHCHR.
Between 2010-2022 she worked as a consultant with the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism and the United Nations Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia (UNRCCA) on the preparation and then implementation of the Action Plan for the Implementation of the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy in Central Asia, helping draw up the First (2011) and Second (2021) Joint Plan of Action for the Implementation of the UN Global Counter Strategy in Central Asia. In 2018, she work as Adviser to the Government of Kazakhstan during their Presidency of the Security Council and helped draft and negotiate a Code of Conduct for the Achievement of a World Free of Terrorism as well as various resolutions on cooperation between Central Asian countries and Afghanistan. She has helped prepare various Prevention of Violent Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Strategies and Action Plans in collaborations with governments of Central Asia.
Selected publications
Academic books
- Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Afghanistan and its Region (with Kristian B. Harpviken), Hurst Publishers and Oxford University Press, July 2016
- Rethinking the Liberal Peace: External Models and Local Alternatives (Editor), Routledge Cass Series on Peacekeeping, 2011
- Human Security: Concepts and Implications (Co-authored with Anuradha Chenoy), London, Routledge, 2007 (with an Indian edition in 2007 and a paperback re-edition from Routledge in 2008)
Publications
- Women Influencing Multi-Stakeholder Peace Dialogue, Processes and Policy Spaces, UN Women, October 2023.
- Afghanistan: One Year Forth, Twenty Years Back, Paris: Institute Montaigne, 26 September 2022.
- Iran and its Relationship with Afghanistan After the Nuclear Deal (with Mohammed Fazeli), Oslo: Peace Research Institute Oslo, July 2016.
- Regional Responses to Radicalization in Afghanistan: Obstacles, Opportunities and an Agenda for Action, Peace Research Institute Oslo Paper, Oslo: PRIO, March 2016.
- Radicalization in the Heart of Asia Countries, publication prepared for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, Department of Regional Cooperation, Secretariat of the Istanbul Process, June 2015.
- Strangers Across the Amu River: Community Perceptions Along the Tajik-Afghan Borders, Working Paper # 4, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Open Society Institute, October 2015.
- Human Security Twenty Years On, Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center, Oslo: Norway, 26 June 2014
- The Persian Gulf and Afghanistan: Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Rivalry Projected, PRIO Paper, Oslo: Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), March 2013.
- Turf on the Roof of the World, Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF), October 2012.
- Central Asia and Afghanistan: Insulation on the Silk Road, Between Eurasia and Heart of Asia, PRIO Paper, Oslo: Peace Research Institute Oslo, March 2012
- Post-War on Terror? Implications from a Regional Perspective”, NOREF Paper, Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF), August 2011
- South Asia and Afghanistan: The Robust India- Pakistan Rivalry', PRIO Paper, Oslo: Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), 2011
- Towards a Human Security Approach to Peacebuilding, United Nations University Research Brief, No.2 (2010), (with Madoka Futamura and Edward Newman)
- “Peacemaking in Tajikistan and Afghanistan Compared: Lessons Learned and Unlearned.” Etudes du CERI No 143, Paris: CERI Sciences Po, 2008
- Normative and Ethical Frameworks for Human Security in Eastern and Central Europe: A Status Report, with Odette Tomasco-Hatto, Paris: UNESCO, 2007.
- « Human Security: Concepts, Implications and Application to the Post-Intervention Challenges in Afghanistan» Etudes du CERI No 118, Paris : CERI/Sciences Po 2005
- Editor in Chief, Security with a Human Face: Challenges and Responsibilities, National Human Development Report for Afghanistan, UNDP and Government of Afghanistan, 2005
- Project Director, The Diary: Personal History of an Early Twentieth Century Bukharan Intellectual, Leiden Press. 2003.
- Women’s Economic Survey of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan: UNHCR and Refugees International 1996
- “Economic Regionalism”, Former Soviet South Project Series Briefing, London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, March 1996
- Tajikistan: A Forgotten Civil War (with Nassim Jawad), London: The Minority Rights Group, 1995
- The Bloody Path of Change: The Case of Post-Soviet Tajikistan, New York: Columbia University Harriman Institute Forum, 6, 11 ( July, 1993)
Chapters in books
- “Human Security: Domino effect of threats to everyday survival, livelihoods and dignity”, in Aiden Warren (editor), Global Security, Edinburgh University Press, 2023.
- "Human Security", Chapter 12 in Cathal J. Nolan (Ed), Ethics and Statecraft: The Moral Dimension of International Affairs, 3rd Edition, New York : Praeger, 2015
- “Internal and Regional Preconditions and Assumptions for Peace in Afghanistan”, in Joachim Krause and Charles King Mallory, IV (Editors), Adjusting Western Strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, London: Routledge, 2013.
- “In Defense of the Broad Approach of Human Security”, chapter in Mary Martins and Taylor Owens (Eds), Handbook on Human Security, London: Routledge, 2013.
- “International Relations Theory and the Islamic Worldview” in Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (Editors), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia, London: Routledge 2010
- “Afghanistan”, in Blanca Antonini & al, Security Council Resolutions Under Chapter VII, Madrid: FRIDE, 2009
- « Human Security and the Legitimization of Peacebuilding », chapter in Oliver Richmond (Ed), Advances in Peacebuilding, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- “Mahbub Ul Haq’s Human Security Vision: An Unfettered Dream?” Chapter in Khadija Haq and Richard Ponzio (Eds), Pioneering the Human Development Revolution: An Intellectual Biography of Mahbub ul Haq, Oxford University Press, 2008
- “Afghanistan: A Failed Narco-State or a Human Security Failure?”, Chapter in Hans Günter Brauch & al. (eds), Globalisation and Environmental Challenges, Volume 4, Springer-Verlag, 2008.
- “State Failure Through the Human Security Lens”, Chapter in Chataigner, Jean-Marc and Hervé Magro (eds), Etats et Sociétés Fragiles, Karthala: Paris, January 2007 (in French)
- “Paix libérale et assistance en Asie Centrale” in Guillaume Devin Editor, Faire la Paix, Paris: Editions Pepper, Chaos International, 2005 (republished under Sciences Po University Press, 2009)
- “A Human Security Agenda for Central Asia” in Farian Sabahi and Daniel Warner Editors, The OSCE and The Multiple Challenges of Transition - The Caucasus and Central Asia. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2004.
- “Between Socialism and Islam: Women in Tajikistan”, in Women in the Wider Muslim World, New York: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996
Articles in journals
- “Effondrement économique : l’opportunité pour un nouveau modèle de développement ? (Economic Collapse : The Opportunity for a New Model of Development ?)”, La Revue du Moyen Orient, No. 54, May 2022
- “Les Talibans face au pouvoir” (The Taliban in the Face of Power), Alternatives Économiques Hors Séries, No . 124, December 2021
- “Conceptualizing love for peace from below: humane security in Afghanistan”, Open Democracy, July 12th 2019
- “Fostering Community Resilience for Preventing Violent Extremism: Perspectives from Central Asia”, The Maldives National Journal of Research Vol. 4, No. 1, November 2016, pp. 35-44
- “Human Security Beyond Responsibility to Protect”, Revista Española de Desarrollo y Cooperación, No. 26, Vol 2, 2010, pp. 13-37
- “A Human Security Tale of Two Europes” (with J. Peter Burgess) Global Society, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2010. “Conflicted Outcomes and Values: (Neo)Liberal Peace in Central Asia and Afghanistan”, International Peacekeeping Special Issue Vol 16, No. 5, November 2009.
- “Interdependency Trends in a Multi-Polar World”, International Issues & Slovak Foreign Policy Affairs, Journal of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association, Issue No. 2, 2009
- “Economic Woes of Liberal Peace”, Conflict INFOCUS, Journal of Regional Centre on Conflict Prevention, Jordan, Issue No.22, July 2008
- “Playing with Fire? The International Community’s Democratization Experiment in Afghanistan” (with Michael Schoistwohl), Journal of International Peacekeeping, Vol.15, No.2, April 2008, pp.252–267
- “ Human Security In International Organizations: Blessing or Scourge?”, The Human Security Journal, Volume 4, Summer 2007
- “National Reconciliation in Tajikistan: the Imperfect Whim:”, The Central Asian Survey, No. 1, 1997
- “Tajikistan: From Freedom to War”, Current History, April 1994.
- “Women and War in Tajikistan”, The Central Asian Monitor, No. 1, January 1994.
- “Tajik Spring of 1992: A Comparison of Tajik Political Parties”, The Central Asian Monitor, No. 2, April 1993.
- "Causes and Consequences of the Civil War", Central Asian Monitor, No.1, February 1993.