Being a knowledge-based organization, research and advocacy are integral parts of ODIR’s mandate. We are committed to play an important role in support of the socio-economic and peacebuilding priorities of the country through rigorous research and advocacy.

An enormous amount of research data on Afghanistan has been produced by both International and Afghan research institutions in the previous two decades. Our approach is to both make sure the proper utilization of the existing knowledge and at the same time contribute to creating new knowledge for informing humanitarian, development and peacebuilding programing in Afghanistan.

There is a consensus among the research community regarding the fact that generating authentic data in a context such as Afghanistan is always a challenging task. The reasons for this state of affairs with the research ecosystem in Afghanistan are manifold, ranging from cultural barriers, security reasons, lack of adequate local research capacities, lack of the local ownership and leadership of the research frameworks development, to undermining of the indigenous knowledge. There is an increasing acknowledgement of the fact that issues have existed with the research undertakings in Afghanistan in the course of the past two decades in all stages of research process, from determining the research paradigm to practical limitations and inadequacy of the selected paradigms for the context.

With due realization of the aforementioned challenges and limitations, we plan to bring together Afghan researchers and academics with in-depth understanding of the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of Afghanistan as well as the Afghan context, who can demonstrate intellectual and thought leadership for developing adequate research programs for contributing to generating authentic knowledge for promoting social and policy learning in Afghanistan.