AFGHANISTAN & DEVELOPMENT

bicc provides expert advice on Afghanistan for the Regional Department of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Since the Taliban took power on 15 August 2021, the question of how development cooperation should be conducted with Afghanistan remains unanswered. This question gives rise to many development, security and social challenges, including the exclusion of women, which policymakers must address. Our advice considers current developments in Afghanistan and relates them to the needs of German development policy. We prepare related inputs and offer space for reflecting on how the identified developments might affect Germany’s future engagement with Afghanistan.

bicc acts as

• a knowledge facilitator for evidence-based decision-making in complex situations
• a sparring partner for the BMZ
• an initiator of internal reflections to support the BMZ’s internal learning process.

The focus of this integrated strategic approach lies on a continuous, iterative process of reflection and learning anchored in all exchanges. Conceptually, this is based on a decolonial perspective, which is especially useful for critically examining development policy action in non-European contexts with regard to implicit constructions of Western demarcation processes 
“othering” and the perpetuation of global inequalities.