Jamila Afghani

Jamila Afghani (born 1976) is an Afghan women's rights activist. She is the founder and executive director of the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO). She is also an executive member of the umbrella organization Afghan Women's Network (AWN). In 2022, Jamila Afghani was awarded the seventh annual Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

Biography Jamila Afghani was born in 1976 in Kabul, Afghanistan. As a child, Afghani had polio and because of complications from the disease has to depend on a brace to walk. When she was fourteen, she was shot in the head during the Soviet War. Afghani earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Peshawar. Afghani's first job was as a social worker for Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. She also helped women in the camps become literate through Qur'anic education classes. In 2001, Afghani founded NECDO, to facilitate education for women and children. She created the first "gender-sensitive training in Afghanistan for Imams." She started the project by finding interested Imams to look at the information she and others had prepared. The Imams started preaching the new materials, which cover women's rights from an Islamic point of view, right away. Afghani has discovered through her work that "women's mouths get shut when they don't have Islamic justifications" because Afghan culture is very religious and conservative. Her gender training has had strong effects on men who did not realize that Islam allowed women's rights and has helped turn men into advocates for women. Afghani has said that the "program is its own kind of revolution because religious leaders once known for oppressing women now use the words of the Quran to promote fairness for them."

She also works to challenge the patriarchal tribal system of government in Afghanistan. In 2021, Jamila Afghani was nominated for the Aurora Prize for the second time and went on to become the 2022 Aurora Prize Laureate.