OSUN launches fellowship program for Afghan scholars

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Open Society University Network (OSUN) has launched the Afghan Challenge Fund (ACF), a fellowship programme for Afghan scholars.

Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative (TSI) is designed to place newly arrived scholars and civil society professionals from Afghanistan in positions that harness their talents and training to help them make positive contributions to a future democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan.

Supported by a $2 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, the ACF is designed to address the precarious conditions that often face Afghans who have arrived in the West since August 2021.

A statement from OSUN said the ACF offered incentives to universities and NGOs in the US, Canada, and the UK to hire newly arrived Afghans and put them on a path to positions that will benefit them, their communities and channel support to Afghan civil society.

Thomas Keenan, director of Bard’s Human Rights Program and co-director of OSUN’s TSII, said: “While the world’s attention has understandably shifted to the war in Ukraine, we don’t want to lose sight of Afghanistan,”

Since last fall, he noted, thousands of brilliant scholars, analysts, advocates and activists had fled Afghanistan for safe havens elsewhere, They have not been supported enough as they seek to apply their talents to organisations in the West or to the future of their country.

As part of the new initiative, he said, the Afghan scholars would be supported through employment that utilizes their skills and experience and creates opportunities for new visions of a future Afghanistan to emerge.

Afghan human rights campaigner Shaharzad Akbar said: “Many highly accomplished Afghan women and men in the diaspora are being forced to abandon their professions in their search for employment.”.

She explained the Challenge Fund was aimed to help match these scholars, activists and professionals with opportunities that align their passions and expertise, enabling them to preserve and expand on their skills, make substantive contributions to the organisations that employ them, and build on their talents as assets for the future of Afghanistan.

The ACF initiative will fund fellowships for scholars in universities, think tanks and research institutions, and for civil society professionals working in media and journalism, arts and culture, public policy, international development, and women’s and human rights.

pr/mud