President Ghani on Wednesday appointed Ms Shahrzad Akbar as the new chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Ms Akbar replaces Ms Sima Samar as the chair of the AIHRC.
Shaharzad Akbar is currently the Deputy National Security Advisor to President.
Before that, she was the Senior Advisor to National Program on Culture and Creative Economy with UNESCO Afghanistan .
She was Senior Advisor to Afghan President on High Development Councils (August 2017-August 2018) and in this capacity, coordinated the prioritization of development projects and programs for high level decision-making.
Prior to this, Shaharzad was Country Director for Open Society Afghanistan (Sep 2014-July 2017), a non-profit that supports Afghan civil society and media in building a vibrant and tolerant society.
Shaharzad Akbar completed an MPhil at Oxford University as a Weidenfeld scholar in 2011; previously she obtained her BA (cum laude) in anthropology from Smith College in the U.S.
