Rule of Law in Afghanistan and Careers at the State Department
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Topic:
The State Department’s collaboration with SLS’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) and the American University of Afghanistan to establish a fully accredited law program and provide quality textbooks in Afghanistan.
After describing the challenges and benefits of the project and its relation to state-building, Mr. Kraft and Ms. Hall will discuss careers in the State Department and opportunities to get involved while in law school.
Lunch will be served. Please rsvp by emailing mkarsh@stanford.edu.
Presenters:
Steven H. Kraft, Director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Programs
A career Foreign Service Officer, Steve Kraft assumed duties as Director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Programs in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the State Department in September 2009. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Kraft was Chargé d’Affaires ad interim and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassies in Luxembourg and Bamako, Mali. He also served as the first Consular Officer and General Services Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan; the Administrative Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Melbourne, and as a Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka. After returning to Washington in 1999, Mr. Kraft held a number of positions at the Department of State. He served in the Executive Secretariat, as the Desk Officer for India and Bhutan, and then as the Desk Officer for Zimbabwe and Botswana. In 2002, Mr. Kraft served with U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Special Forces units in Herat in the western part of Afghanistan. Mr. Kraft holds a B.A. in Political Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a M.A. in Soviet Studies from the University of Essex in England. He has studied several languages including French, German, Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Sinhala. Mr. Kraft is the recipient of several Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor Awards.
Karen Hall, Team Leader for Rule of Law Issues in Afghanistan
Karen Hall’s team manages seventeen assistance programs in the areas of justice sector institutional development, major crimes interventions, legal education, access to justice, and gender justice. Karen has worked on the Afghanistan portfolio for the State Department since August 2005. From 2006 to 2008, she worked in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan managing criminal justice and corrections programs. Prior to joining the State Department, she practiced commercial litigation in a Washington D.C. law firm. Karen graduated with a Master’s Degree in International Security Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in December 2009 and wrote her culminating paper on developing a framework for designing and evaluating criminal justice assistance programs in developing countries and then applying that framework to Afghanistan. She graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2001, and graduated with a B.A. in Russian Honors from Brigham Young University in 1998.
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