Reem Alabali-Radovan is Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor. She has been Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration since 2021 and Commissioner for Anti-Racism since 2022. Alabali-Radovan lives in Schwerin and is a member of the German Bundestag. She was born in Moscow to Iraqi parents in 1990 and came to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with her family in 1996. She studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and, until her election to the German Bundestag in 2021, she held various positions in the areas of refugees and integration - most recently as Integration Commissioner for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Dr Sabine Fandrych studied Political Science, Ethnology and Portuguese Linguistics at LMU Munich (M.A. in 1996). After working as a consultant and spending research periods in Mozambique and Angola she received her PhD from the Institute for Political Sciences at the University of Hamburg in 2000. Between 2000 and 2007 she was among others head of the office of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Angola as well as a consultant for organizational development and reintegration policy at giz (formerly GTZ, 2004 – 2006). From 2007 to 2010 Ms. Fandrych headed the FES office in Ethiopia and at the African Union.In 2010 she joined the field of FES’s activities in Germany as the head of the FES office in Baden-Wuerttemberg. From 2017 to 2021 she headed FES’s Division of the Political Academy in Bonn. Since July 2021 she has been a member of the Executive Board and Secretary General of FES.
Michael Müller was born on December 09, 1964 in Berlin. After visiting secondary school and graduating from the technical college for economics and administration, he worked as a self-employed printer until 2011.
Müller became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1981. In 1996, he became a member of the Berlin House of Representatives. In 2001, Müller became parliamentary chairman of the SPD, until he was appointed Mayor and Senator for Urban Development and Environment in 2011. In 2014, he was elected as the Governing Mayor of Berlin, including being Senator for Culture. Müller was re-elected as Governing Mayor in 2016 and has been senator for science and research.
In 2017, he became President of the Bundesrat for one year.
Since October 2021, Müller is a Member of the German Bundestag (Parliament). He is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and is the SPD rapporteur on East-Asia and the Middle East. Furthermore, Michael Müller is the chairman of the German-Japanese parliamentary group and the commission that evaluates the German engagement in Afghanistan.
Dr Almut Wieland-Karimi is Senior Policy Advisor. From 2009 to 2022, she was Managing Director of the Center for International Peace Operations, a subsidiary organization of the German Federal Foreign Office. Prior to that, she was the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's country representative for the USA and Canada, based in Washington DC, from 2006 to 2009. From 2002 to 2005, she was the founding director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Afghanistan. She has also been the honorary managing director of the NGO Mediothek Afghanistan e. V. for 30 years. She is a member of both the Advisory Board of the Mercator Foundation and the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Group for the Peacebuilding Fund.
Mirco Günther studied Political Sciences (Berlin 2004-2008), Middle East and Central Asian Security Studies (University of St Andrews, 2008-09) and Public Administration as a McCloy Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School in Harvard (2013-2015). From 2010 to 2016 he held various leadership positions in field missions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Tajikistan. He joined FES as Country Director Afghanistan (2016-2019) and was Managing Director of the FES Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia in Singapore (2019-2022). In 2022 he became Head of Department for Asia and the Pacific.
Erik Kurzweil has studied History and Romance languages and literatures and joined the German Federal Foreign Office in 1999. After working in Bucharest, New Delhi and Washington as well as serving as Deputy Head of Taskforce Afghanistan/Pakistan (2012-2014) in Berlin and as Permanent Representative of the Ambassador in Kabul (2014-2016), he headed the Crisis Response Centre at the Federal Foreign Office until 2019. From 2019 to 2022, Erik Kurzweil was first Head and then Director-General of International Relations, Media Policy and Protocol at the Sächsische Staatskanzlei Dresden. At the beginning of 2023, he returned to the Federal Foreign Office as Director for Indo-Pacific Policy, South Asia and Afghanistan.
Fazila Zamer is one of Afghanistan's best-known Rabab players. She began her musical training at the Agha Khan Cultural Foundation before moving to the National Music Institute of Afghanistan, where she founded the very first Afghan women's orchestra "Zohra". After completing her studies at Kabul University, she was part of various Afghan television orchestras. She also she was employed in the Ministry of Culture as the head of music and was the founder of the Mahd Honar Music Academy, which introduced many young people, especially young women, to music until the fall of Kabul.
Khalil Aria was a renown artist, singer and regisseur in Afghanistan, before he had to flee to Germany after the takeover of the Taliban. Today, he combines traditional and modern influences as singer and producer to create a vision for different Afghanistan.
Mustafa Karimi is considered by many as one of most renown pianists in Afghanistan, where he has been active on the music scene for about 10 years. He emigrated to Germany in 2010 and continues his work here.
Amin Joindeh is an experienced tabla player with 12 years of experience with this instrument. He immigrated to Germany nine years ago.