The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination will host a lecture, "Left Behind: The United Nations in Post-Transition Afghanistan," by Ambassador Zahir Tanin, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013, at 4:30 p.m. in 016 Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus. The event is free and open to the public. The lecture is co-sponsored with the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

As Afghanistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Tanin has participated in the high level meetings of the General Assembly as a member of his country’s delegations since 2007, has delivered statements on behalf of the government of Afghanistan in the Security Council, the General Assembly, and has participated in other events and panels both within and outside of the UN. He has traveled to high-level meetings around the world to represent Afghanistan, including the Rio +20 conference in June 2012, the 4th UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC) in Istanbul in June 2011, and as head of delegation in LDC conferences in Lisbon (2010), Delhi (2011), and and the Non-Aligned Movement Ministerial Meeting in Cuba (2009).

On behalf of Afghanistan, Ambassador Tanin has served as a vice chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People since 2006, and has chaired or attended numerous meetings around the world in this capacity.  Ambassador Tanin’s statements, addresses, and articles from December 2006 through September 2009 are published in his book, Afghanistan on the World Stage. Since 2005 Ambassador Tanin has worked with LISD’s working group on Afghanistan and has been a participant in numerous LISD workshops and Liechtenstein Colloquia. 

Before his appointment as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Tanin worked for eleven years with the BBC: as a Producer from 1995 to 2000; as a Senior Producer from 2000 to 2001; as an editor for BBC World Service, Afghanistan and Central Asia from 2001 to 2003; and as an editor for the BBC Persian/Pashto Section (Editor for Afghanistan) from 2003 to 2006. Before joining the BBC, Ambassador Tanin was a research fellow in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 1994 to 1995. Ambassador Tanin is a graduate of Kabul Medical University. He began his career in 1980 working as a journalist in Kabul. He was Editor-in-Chief of Akhbar-e-Haftah and Sabawoon Magazine until 1992. He is the co-author of The Communist Regime in Afghanistan, a study of the political and social changes in Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992, and is the author of Afghanistan in the Twentieth Century.