Sima Wali obituary: Afghan women’s rights campaigner and vociferous opponent of Taliban ideology
Nearly 40 years of war
and insecurity have taken their toll on Afghan women, and access to education,
health services and the rule of law remain severely limited. Sima Wali, who has
died aged 66 from multiple
system atrophy, a rare neurological disease, was a persistent voice in her
countrywomen’s battle for better rights.
As president of Refugee Women in
Development, a nonprofit organisation that she established in the US in
1981 after fleeing Afghanistan for fear of communist persecution, Wali raised
international awareness of the plight of Afghan women, and raised millions of
dollars in funding for women-led Afghan organisations, in her own “jihad for
social justice and peace”. She was instrumental
in the establishment of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in the post-Taliban
Afghan government, when she was one of only three Afghan female invitees to
the 2001 conference in Bonn to decide their country’s future.
There, Hamid Karzai was chosen to head Afghanistan’s interim government, while
Wali’s lobbying for the ministry, an institution that continues to operate,
paid off.
“In the future, we can
make sure women play a major part, both in the governing positions as well as
in the civil society,” she said. “We will not go away.” Born to well-educated
parents in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the
birthplace of the Taliban, Sima spent her early years in India, where her
banker father, Mohammad Wali, was posted. Her mother, Shafiqa (nee Sharifi),
briefly oversaw a clothing factory in Kabul. Fighting to better the lives of
Afghan women was in part a family tradition: her father’s first cousin was
Amanullah Khan, Afghanistan’s reformist king of the 1920s and an early crusader
for girls’ education.
Equal rights for women
were enshrined in Afghan law as part of the 1964 constitution. “When I was growing
up, female role models were active members of parliament, as well as doctors,
judges and educators working alongside men,” Wali said… read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/05/sima-wali-obituary
