Ahmad Fahim Hakim
Jennings Randolph Afghanistan Fellow
August 10,
2008 ? November 10, 2009
Project Focus:
Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan
Afghanistan | South Asia | Human Rights, Human Rights Education |
Community-based Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution | Transitional Justice
Phone: (202) 429-3874
E-mail: fhakim@usip.org
Languages: Dari | Pashto
Human rights commissioner Ahmad Fahim Hakim’s research focuses on the challenges of the
presidential and parliamentary elections in Afghanistan and recommendations for the 2009 and 2010
elections.
Hakim, the deputy chair to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, began his career as
a professor and lecturer in Kabul University’s architecture department. In 1991 he began work for
the U.N. Centre for Human Settlements-Habitat, where he collaborated with local authorities and
war-affected communities in Kabul. Since then, Hakim has worked in emergency and humanitarian
relief, social mobilization and development, capacity building and advocacy and human rights with
various national, international and U.N. agencies in Afghanistan. He was managing director at
Cooperation for Peace and Unity, helping implementation of community-based peacebuilding and peace
education initiatives. In 2006 he was contracted by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights to help conduct national consultations on transitional justice in Burundi. Hakim is a
board member of various Afghan civil society institutions working for human rights, freedom of
expression and democracy. He was one of the key facilitators and an observer for the constitutional
grand assembly (loya jirga), which resulted in the approval of a new constitution in 2004.
Hakim holds a B.S. in architecture from Faculty of Engineering, Kabul University and an M.A. in
postwar recovery from York University, York, UK.
