Tina Robiolle (E00): "We Helped Afghan Women to Become Leaders"

For more than 10 years, Tina Robiolle (E00) has been at the forefront of the Afghan Women Leaders Initiative, helping Afghan women to obtain leadership roles in their country. 2 years after the return of the Taliban, she takes stock of the situation.  

ESSEC Alumni: How did you become an expert in negotiation and conflict resolution?

Tina Robiolle: I’ve always been fascinated by geopolitics and during my studies I contributed to the launch of ESSEC IRENE (Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation). I thus discovered capacity building in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. When I graduated, I acquired more practical knowledge of these issues on taking over the management of a 15-person team in a France Télécom shop (now Orange), as part of Télécom Talents (a programme for high-potential employees launched that same year). At the same time, I continued working for IRENE, who sent me to teach at ESSEC, ENA and Sorbonne University. A few years later, I decided to devote my time fully to consulting and training activities with international organisations and NGOs.

EA: How did you enter this sector? 

T. Robiolle: In 2003, IRENE was called on to work with an American think tank as part of a Burundi-based initiative, led in partnership with the UN and funded by various stakeholders including the World Bank. I was invited to participate in a first assignment; to train around a hundred former national army members, UN military observers and ex-rebels. The experience heightened my interest in this type of initiative.

EA: What other assignments did you carry out after that? 

T. Robiolle: I was lucky enough to be called on for several similar assignments geared towards other groups in Burundi and in the DR Congo. In particular, we helped to develop a programme for secondary schools in partnership with the Burundi Ministry of Education. This project inspired me to do a PhD on the role of this form of teaching in so-called fragile states. UNESCO then entrusted me with a research project aimed at drafting recommendations for school policies designed to prevent violence in this type of context.

EA: And you continued to pave the way... 

T. Robiolle: That’s true. I went on to carry out assessments on the impact of mediation projects led in Libya and Syria by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD). More recently, I was sent to Nigeria by the United Nations Development Programme to lead a seminar involving 70 local and international players, aimed at creating a stability plan for the Lake Chad region, which has been impacted by the presence of Boko Haram.

EA: You also founded the Afghan Women Leaders Initiative. How did this project come about? 

T. Robiolle: Following a lengthy career with the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), my mother, Fahimeh, developed an interest in IRENE’s activities. In this context, we decided to co-organise two major conferences with 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, one of which was an ESSEC Tuesday event to mark the 10th anniversary of IRENE in 2006. The three of us discussed the projects I had led in Burundi and we thought about how a similar initiative could be implemented in Iran. Shirin Ebadi explained to us that the regime would not allow this, and that we should direct our efforts towards Afghanistan.

EA: Why? 

T. Robiolle: Afghan women had begun to play a larger role on the political stage thanks to the change in the constitution and a quota system which enabled the election of 69 women to parliament. However, these female MPs did not necessarily have all the tools they needed to meet the goals of their mandate. We felt that they could really benefit from our training programmes, even more so given that training would be in Persian, whereas the existing offer was in English.

EA: How did you turn your idea into reality?

T. Robiolle: Along with a (female) French MP, the Vice President of the France-Afghanistan Friendship Group within the National Assembly, we travelled to Kabul in 2009 to determine whether our project truly corresponded to a need on the ground. After meeting a number of women MPs and obtaining their approval, in addition to the official backing of the President of the Afghan Parliament, we started looking for funds. We obtained financial support from the US State Department, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the French National Assembly to provide training for an initial delegation of Afghan women MPs. I naturally suggested to ESSEC that we host this delegation on the Cergy campus and organise a conference with ESSEC Tuesdays. Thanks to the support of School management and its teams, this experience was a great success.

EA: What further actions have you led?

T. Robiolle: That first 2011 initiative confirmed the feasibility of our model and convinced other stakeholders to fund subsequent training programmes. These programmes provided Afghan women with the opportunity to boost their negotiation skills and develop solutions to their specific issues. Little by little, our work began to expand beyond the parliamentary sphere. When we hosted a new delegation at ESSEC in 2019, thanks to Vincenzo Vinzi and ESSEC Tuesdays once again, the women we welcomed held high-level positions in various sectors. One of them was the first female candidate for the vice-presidency of Afghanistan! The aim of that seminar was to define strategies enabling some of them to boost their chances of taking part in the negotiations under way at the time between the USA and the Taliban. One month later, three of them joined the proceedings. 

EA: Have you continued your initiatives since the return to power of the Taliban? 

T. Robiolle: We have remained in contact with the Afghan women of these delegations. When the Taliban were closing in on Kabul in the early summer of 2021, we knew those women were all on their ‘kill list’. When the city fell in August, our goal became purely humanitarian, i.e. to get these women to safety. We activated our network from Paris to evacuate them. Through our contacts at the French Embassy in Kabul and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we succeeded in bringing some of them to France, where they remain to this day. We also helped other figures such as the high-level para-taekwondo athlete Zakia Khudadad, who was due to go to the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. ESSEC was again involved, but indirectly this time. Jean-Michel Blanquer, the then Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports, and former Dean and President of the School, facilitated Zakia’s evacuation and arrival in France, where she could resume training. On a positive note, she went on to win gold at the European para-taekwondo championships in mid-August 2023, two years after the Taliban regained Kabul.

Interview by Louis Armengaud Wurmser (E10), Content Manager at ESSEC Alumni 
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