The Women and Public Policy Journal (WPPJ), the flagship publication of the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS Afghanistan), celebrated its 10th anniversary on June 30, 2026.
Marking this major milestone, DROPS collaborated with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to host a celebration event focusing on the resilience and scholarly output of Afghan women under extreme civic restrictions.
The 10th Milestone Volume
To coincide with the anniversary, DROPS launched the 10th Volume of the WPPJ, titled “Exclusion, Resistance, and Resilience: Afghan Women and the WPS Agenda After 2021”. Edited by Mariam Safi and Rajeshwari Krishnamurthy, the anniversary volume features rigorous essays from Afghan and Indian scholars covering:
- Access to Justice: Documenting the collapse of independent legal remedies and the systemic exclusion of women.
- Socioeconomic Rights: Analyzing health, entrepreneurship, and alternative paths to girls’ education under current restrictions.
- Human Security: Offering localized definitions of peace and governance distinct from the narratives of external actors.
Why the WPPJ Matters
- Sole Platform: It remains Afghanistan’s first and only peer-reviewed public policy journal authored exclusively by women.
- Policy Influence: The journal was designed as an intellectual engine to train Afghan women in policy research and inject their unfiltered data directly into global decision-making forums.
- Scholarly Defiance: Operating despite the dismantling of civic spaces, the 10th anniversary serves as a testament to the survival of Afghan female scholarship in exile and on the ground.
