Fri, 04/27/2012 - 7:00pm - 8:30pm
The Question of Afghanistan
Events | 2012 International Speaker Series
Photo: dvids
Afghan human rights pioneer and Nobel Peace prize nominee Sima Samar has spent her life breaking barriers. The first Hazara woman to obtain a medical degree from Kabul University and an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, Dr. Samar was Deputy President of Afghanistan and the country’s first Minister for Women's Affairs. Ousted by religious conservatives, she now chairs the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Presenters
Sima Samar
Human Rights Advocate
Sima Samar was born in Jaghori, Ghazni, Afghanistan, on 4 February 1957. She obtained her degree in medicine in February 1982 from Kabul University, the first Hazara woman to do so. After living in refuge for over a decade, Samar returned to Afghanistan in 2002 to assume a cabinet post in the Afghan Transitional Administration led by Hamid Karzai. In the interim government, she served as Deputy President and then as Minister for Women's Affairs. She was forced into resignation from her post after she was threatened with death and harassed for questioning conservative Islamic laws, especiallysharia law, during an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. She currently heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
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