The Initiative for Peacebuilding launched a Conversation Series in 2021 to hold spaces for deeper listening to Australian-based peacebuilders and discussion of important dimensions of their peacebuilding work. Since then, these conversations have expanded to include a range of peacebuilders from across Australia and the region.

In 2025, join Tania Miletic online in conversation with peacebuilders who share insights about their experience building local capacities for peace, mediation efforts, and facilitating conflict transformation globally.

Join us on 29 September from 1-2pm with Omar Samad for a discussion about advancing and facilitating intra-Afghan dialogue platforms with members from within and outside Afghanistan.

Omar Samad is a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center (since 2018), and CEO of Silkroad Consulting since 2013.

He is a member of the intra-Afghan dialogue platform, Afghan Future Thought Forum (AFTF) since 2022, and USIP’s track2 Afghan dialogue series 2023-25. He is also a founding member of the Salaam Center for Dialogue (SCD) based in the U.S., a dialogue facilitation platform with members inside and outside Afghanistan.

Samad served as a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation in 2021. In 2016, he resigned as Ambassador-designate to Belgium and the European Union. He was Senior Advisor to Afghanistan’s Chief Executive (2014-2016). He served as Ambassador of Afghanistan to France from 2009-11, and Ambassador to Canada from 2004-09. He was Spokesperson and Dir. General of Media-Information Division at the Foreign Ministry in Kabul (2002-04).

Please email tmiletic@unimelb.edu.au with any queries.