The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2022 17 The next step is for this document to gain champions on Capitol Hill and within the Biden administration to enact the proposed changes. Find the complete set of blueprints at https://bit.ly/ADPblueprints. State Releases DEIA Road Map O n Sept. 13, the State Department released its five-year strategic plan, developed in response to President Joe Biden’s June 2021 “ Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessi- bility (DEIA) in the Federal Workforce,” a governmentwide diversity initiative. Specifically, State’s plan includes: establishing DEIA advancement as a part of employees’ job performance and pro- motion criteria; using an evidence-based approach to identify barriers to equitable career outcomes; targeting underrep- resented groups in recruitment efforts; conducting a DEIA climate survey across the department; enhancing reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities; creating a retention unit to address attrition; and ensuring greater transparency in all areas, particularly telework policies, assignments, evalua- tions, and promotions, and legal obliga- tions for reasonable accommodations. Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Win- stanley will work with leaders across the department to oversee the implementa- tion of the plan, which runs through 2026. The State Department has taken a series of steps under the current adminis- tration to improve diversity and accessi- bility: Amb. Abercrombie-Winstanley was appointed the department’s first-ever CDIO in April 2021; a new core precept was introduced earlier this year for- mally integrating DEIA principles into employee performance evaluations; and two new fellowship programs geared toward underrepresented segments of society were announced in August 2022. Ukraine Pushes Back U krainian troops made significant gains during their Kharkiv counter- offensive in early September, executing what The Economist called “the most consequential military action of the war since Russia abandoned northern Ukraine in March.” By Sept. 11, the country’s forces had retakenmore than 1,100 square miles in under 48 hours. But a swift end to the war remains unlikely; Russian troops still hold about a fifth of the country, andmass burial sites uncovered near the liberated town of Iziumdemonstrate the Kremlin’s willingness to target civilians and commit atrocities. Hundreds of bodies have already been exhumed, many showing signs of violence and torture, Reuters wrote. On Sept. 21, Russian President Vladi- mir Putin announced a partial military mobilization of at least 300,000 Russian citizens with military backgrounds. The announcement sparked protests in dozens of cities, prompted a flood of Russian men to flee the country, and brought an uptick in attacks on military recruitment centers. In a “60 Minutes” interview on CBS, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he and other leaders in the West will not rec- ognize the results of illegal annexation ref- erendums in Russian-occupied provinces of Ukraine. By Sept. 28, Kremlin prox- ies announced that Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson had all voted to join Russia. Ongoing Struggles for Afghans O n the one-year anniversary of the Taliban’s ban on Afghan girls attending secondary school, the United Nations mission to the country repeated its demand for the ban to be overturned immediately. Markus Potzel, acting head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, described the anniversary on Sept. 18 as “tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable” with “no credible justification and no parallel anywhere in the world.” The U.N. estimates that more than 1 million girls have been barred from attending school over the past year, despite international condemnation and promises from Taliban authorities that the situation would improve. Foreign Policy reported in early August that more than 77,000 Afghans who have applied for a special immigrant visa (SIV)—many of whom worked alongside U.S. troops—are still trapped in Afghani- stan, where they fear being targeted and killed by the Taliban. Only about 10,400 of those applicants have received chief of mission approval. We have to take a bigger part of our responsibility in securing security. … We did not believe that the war [in Ukraine] was coming. I have to recognize that here, in Brussels, the Americans were telling us ‘They will attack, they will attack,’ and we were quite reluctant to believe it. —High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell, in a speech to E.U. ambassadors at their annual conference in Brussels, Oct. 10. Contemporary Quote