Eloisa Romani

Fatima Gailani comes from a prominent Afghan family who has been working to improve life in her country since the 1980s. But under the Taliban rule since August 2021, women's rights in Afghanistan have been particularly battered if not virtually erased in what some experts Secondary school classes and university education are mostly outlawed for girls and women; recently, girls have been banned from attending school beyond third grade, dropping from sixth grade.

For the disarmament agenda to progress, its machinery needs to be revisited. Current efforts by the Conference on Disarmament - the United Nations body tasked with negotiating treaties on weapons control - have stalled for almost 30 years because agreement requires consensus and a lack of political will is fed by geopolitical rivalries among member states.