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For an International Women’s Day special episode of Hold Your Fire!, Naz Modirzadeh and Richard Atwood talk to Azadeh Moaveni, Crisis Group’s gender and conflict expert, about the Women, Peace and Security agenda and Crisis Group’s work on gender and conflict.

In October, the Women, Peace and Security principles enumerated in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 turned twenty. But the aims remain largely unachieved. Governments and the UN should stop using this agenda for counter-terrorism work and listen better to what women activists say they need.

This week on War & Peace, Aleksandra Dier, Gender Coordinator at the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, shares her outlook on the progress made globally in understanding the complex interplay between gender, terrorism and counter-terrorism as the first in her role at the UN.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis remain uprooted and unable to go home after the war to defeat ISIS. The worst off are those, mainly women and children, perceived to have jihadist ties. Iraq and its partners should find ways to end their displacement.

Crisis Group talks with Shaharzad Akbar, Head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

To help justify its coercive measures against the Islamic Republic, Washington often evokes Iranian women’s struggles for inclusion and equality. But evidence from today’s Iran shows that U.S. policies are instead contributing to holding women back.

This week on War & Peace, Olga Oliker and Hugh Pope talk to Azadeh Moaveni, Crisis Group's Gender Director, about the foreign national women and children stuck in Syria. They discuss Western governments efforts to repatriate their citizens and the potential domestic political pushback.

Tens of thousands of foreign men, women and children affiliated with ISIS are detained in northeast Syria. The camps where they are held pose a formidable security and humanitarian challenge to the region. Western governments should, at minimum, accelerate the repatriation of women and children. 

In this podcast, Horn of Africa expert Alan Boswell and Senior Analyst on Gender Azadeh Moaveni talk about Crisis Group’s field research on women’s roles within Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, and compare them to women’s roles with Nigeria’s Boko Haram and other Islamist groups.