Fawzia Koofi

Fawzia Koofi (, ; born 1975) is an Afghan politician, writer, and women's rights activist. Originally from Badakhshan province and ethnically Tajik, Koofi was recently a member of the Afghan delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban in Doha Qatar. She is an ex Member of Parliament in Kabul and was the Vice President of the National Assembly.

Biography

Youth and education Koofi's father was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 25 years but died at the end of the Afghan war (1979–1989), killed by Mujahideen.

Koofi managed to persuade her parents to send her to school, making her the only girl in the family to attend. She originally pursued a medical degree but was unable to continue when the Taliban banned women from all education after their 1996 takeover. After the 2001 fall of the Taliban she returned to school and eventually graduated from Preston university with a master's degree in business and management.

Koofi worked with vulnerable groups such as Internally Displaced People (IDP) and marginalized women and children, and served as a child protection officer for UNICEF from 2002 to 2004. In 2009 Koofi drafted the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) legislation. Signed as a decree, the draft needed to be voted on in order to become an official document of the constitution. It was presented to Parliament in 2013 and was blocked by the conservative members who claimed articles of the law went against Islam. However, the law is being implemented in all 34 provinces in Afghanistan and court cases are being decided based on the law.

Koofi intended to run for President of Afghanistan in the 2014 Afghan presidential election on a platform of equal rights for women, promoting universal education, and the opposition to political corruption, but she said in July 2014 that the election commission moved the registration date to October 2013 and as a result she did not qualify for the minimum age requirement of 40 years of age.

She was re-elected as a member of Parliament in 2014 but no longer serves as the deputy speaker. She currently serves as Chairperson of Afghanistan's Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission.

In 2020, Fawzia Koofi was a part of the 21-member team, which was supposed to represent the Afghanistan government in the negotiation peace talks with the Taliban. On 14 August 2020, she was shot in the arm by gunmen, who attempted to assassinate her near Kabul, while she was returning from a visit to the northern province of Parwan with her sister Maryam Koofi.

Amid the rapid advance of the Taliban during the summer of 2021, when asked in an interview about her thoughts regarding the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Fawzia Koofi said that the U.S. had abandoned the women of Afghanistan and that she's very disappointed with what's happening.

Women's rights engagement Koofi has made it a priority to defend women's rights in Afghanistan. In 2009, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2020, she supported a change to Afghan law brought about by the #WhereIsMyName campaign led by Laleh Osmany to include women's names on Afghan identity cards, describing it as a "human right".

Personal life Koofi was married to a man named Hamid, an engineer and chemistry teacher. Her marriage was arranged, but she did not disapprove of her family's choice. Ten days after their wedding, Taliban soldiers arrested her husband and he was imprisoned. In prison he contracted tuberculosis and died shortly after his release in 2003. Following the Taliban takeover in August 2021, Fausia Kufi was placed under house arrest in Kabul. She left her homeland and has since been living in exile in London with her two daughters.

Autobiographical memoir The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future, is an autobiographical memoir written by Fawzia Koofi with the aid of Nadene Ghouri. Originally published under the title Letters to My Daughter, this edition was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. The book tells the story of Koofi's life throughout her childhood, education, and involvement in politics. It consists of narrations about her life interspersed with letters written to her two daughters.

Works

In Media

BBC HARDtalk 08 Jun 2022 Fawzia Koofi: Do Afghans still have hope?

Recognition She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women in 2013.