Farida Allaghi

Farida Allaghi is Senior Advisor to the President of the Arab Gulf Programme for the United Nations Development Organizations (AGFUND) and former Director of its Woman and Child Division. Dr. Allaghi is a member of the Board of Trustees and former Executive Director of the Mentor Foundation, an international NGO that focuses on the prevention of drug abuse in its efforts to promote the health and well-being among children and youth. She is a board member of The Arab Thought Foundation and The Arab Reform Forum and has previously worked as General Coordinator for the Arab Council for Children and for the Arab Network for Civil Society. She provides regional and international advice and consultancy services in the areas of civil society, human rights, democracy, public policy and advocacy, women's issues, and youth, and is a contributing Editor to the UN's Arab Human Development Report.
In 1991, she joined other civil society leaders across the globe to form the steering committee that led to the establishment of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, an international alliance of members from 105 countries that seeks to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world, especially in areas where participatory democracy and citizens' freedom of association are threatened. Additionally, Dr. Allaghi serves on the International Advisory Committee for the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, a research initiative that documents, analyzes, and evaluates the scope, structures, financing and role of private, non-profit institutions at the international level. Dr. Allaghi received a PhD in Sociology, Planning, and Development from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, USA (1980).