Mr. Pashtoon Atif is the Founder and Executive Director of Mundigak. He brings more than two decades of experience in international development, governance, and programme leadership across government, international organizations, and civil society.

Mr. Atif served as Director General of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), leading national climate and environmental policy at ministerial level and representing Afghanistan in engagements with the World Bank, the Green Climate Fund, UNDP, and UNEP.

Prior to NEPA, Mr. Atif led humanitarian and development programmes in some of the world’s most complex operating environments, including active conflict zones in Afghanistan and Darfur, Sudan. He served as Country Director of GoodWeave International in Afghanistan, where he directed a multi-year effort to eliminate child labour from the handmade carpet sector alongside the delivery of a child trafficking prevention programme, both of which achieved documented reductions in child labour and in the number of children at risk. Mr. Atif has also worked with the United Nations Development Programme and the Italian NGO Cooperazione Internazionale (COOPI), managing UN-, ECHO-, and USAID-funded programmes in health, water and sanitation, and the reintegration of ex-combatants.

Mr. Atif holds a Master of Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, where he was a Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust Scholar, and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.

It is this experience of inside government, inside the UN system, and on the ground in conflict-affected communities that Mr. Atif now brings to Mundigak’s mission of producing independent, rigorous policy research on Afghanistan’s governance, environment, and development challenges.