Dean Vali Nasr and the Foreign Policy Institute hosted a discussion on "Building Peace, Security and Prosperity in Pakistan" with Senator Sherry Rehman, Founding Chair and serving President of the Jinnah Institute
Joining in Discussion was Ambassador Shirin Tahir-Kheli, Senior Fellow, SAIS Foreign Policy Institute, and Dr. Daniel Markey, Senior Research Professor and Academic Director of Global Public Policy Program, SAIS
Senator Sherry Rehman is the founding Chair and serving President of the Jinnah Institute, a leading policy think tank in Islamabad with a strategic focus on regional peace. Senator Rehman is the Vice President of the Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarian which holds the main opposition lead in both Houses of Parliament. Rehman is also the former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States; Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Pakistan and ranking member of the National Security Committee in the Parliament, Rehman also held three additional portfolios of Health, Women Development and Culture as Federal Minister.
An award-winning journalist from Pakistan with 20 years of experience in both broadcast and the print media, she is a former editor of the Herald newsmagazine based in Pakistan. Rehman is also the architect of the first parliamentary charter and bill for women empowerment, as well as for the Protection of Religious Minorities, mover of the Hudood Ordinances Repeal Bill, mover of the Anti-Honour Killings Bill, as well as the Freedom of Information Act 2004. Her bills include the removal of colonial press laws in Pakistan, as well as landmark legislation on Sexual Harassment at the Workplace, Domestic Violence and Affirmative Action for women. In August 2008, Rehman's move to repeal amendments in the Print and Publication Ordinance paved the way for constitutional protection for the print media (RTI Bill). Rehman is the recipient of several awards including the title of Democracy's Hero for her services for democracy; The Freedom Award for her work for media independence; the International Peace Award for Democrats, and the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Award for Women. She was ranked ‘Pakistan's Most Important Woman’ by Newsweek Pakistan, and identified as one of 2011's Top Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. She was awarded the state's highest civil award, the Nishan-i-Imtiaz in March 2013.
Dr. Daniel S. Markey is senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is also the academic director for the SAIS Global Policy Program and an adjunct senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
From 2007-2015, Daniel Markey was senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at CFR. While there, he wrote a book on the future of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
From 2003 to 2007, Dr. Markey held the South Asia portfolio on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. Prior to government service, he taught in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where he served as executive director of Princeton's Research Program in International Security. Earlier, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.
Dr. Markey is the author of numerous reports, articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces. He has written two CFR Special Reports: Reorienting U.S. Pakistan Strategy (2014) and Securing Pakistan’s Tribal Belt (2008). In 2010, he served as project director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His commentary has been featured widely in U.S. and international media.
Dr. Markey earned a bachelor's degree in international studies from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in politics from Princeton University.
Dr. Shirin Tahir-Kheli was named by Newsweek in 2011 as one of the "150 Women Who Shake the World". She specializes in South Asia, Nuclear Non-Proliferation, United Nations and U.S. Foreign Policy, Women's Empowerment.
From March 2003 to April 2005, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the National Security Council. She proposed and coordinated the building of the Children's Hospital for treatment of Cancer in Basra, Iraq from 2004-2009. The hospital, the first of its kind in Iraq, and a public-private partnership, opened in 2010.
During 2004 - 2006 she served as the key U.S. official in the formulation of U.S. policy toward United Nations Reform. She oversaw the diplomatic effort to press for critical changes in the UN system from her position as Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council and later as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for UN Reform.
Shirin Tahir-Kheli was appointed by Secretary Condoleezza Rice as her Senior Advisor for Women’s Empowerment on April 5 2006. There, she established the first ever office focused on integrating Women's Empowerment into U.S. foreign policy. She set-up and oversaw the work of the Women Leaders' Working group comprising some sixty female heads of state, foreign ministers, political leaders, attorney generals and speakers of parliaments, focused on political participation, education, economic empowerment and justice. Tahir-Kheli spear-headed the State Department initiative for "Women's Justice" which brought together at the Department of State on March 12, 2008, judges from around the world to work on measures to alleviate the severity of violence against women and women's lack of access to justice, which continues.
Dr. Tahir-Kheli was Research Professor of International Relations at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. From 1999-June 2002, she served as the founding Director, South Asia Program, FPI/SAIS.
Earlier, in her service in the United States government, Tahir-Kheli served as: Head of the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in 2001; Alternate United States Representative to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs (1990-93), a post that carries the rank of Ambassador; Member, United States Presidential Commission on the Public Service during 1992-93; Director of Near East and South Asian Affairs (1986-89), White House National Security Council; Director of Political Military Affairs(1984-1986) at the National Security Council. She joined the Reagan Administration in 1982 as Member, Policy Planning Staff in the Office of the Secretary of State.
Ambassador Tahir-Kheli has dedicated her efforts to finding areas of agreement between India and Pakistan that could change their relationship to one of productive peace. Toward that end, she has been chair of the BALUSA Group comprising senior Indian and Pakistani and US participants that is geared to influencing policy toward cooperation.
She is the author and editor of several monographs, including: India, Pakistan and the United States: Breaking with the Past published by the Council on Foreign Relations (1997), and The United States and Pakistan: The Evolution.