Saleema Rehman

Saleema Rehman (born ) is an Afghan refugee medical doctor living in Pakistan. She is the first female Afghan Turkmen physician.

Early life and education Rehman is of Afghan Turkmen ethnicity, and was born in in a refugee camp in Swabi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan after her parents had fled from Afghanistan in 1979 during the Soviet–Afghan War. Her great-grandfather had also been a refugee, fleeing from Turkmenistan to northern Afghanistan in 1917 during the Russian Revolution.

She was one of a small group of refugee girls in her class at primary school in Attock, near Islamabad, and, as a refugee, found it difficult to move on to higher education but eventually in 2009 won the single place reserved for a refugee at Rawalpindi Medical University, for her medical training. Throughout, she had to go against the norms of her culture which did not expect women to become educated or to have ambitions beyond carpet-weaving and marriage.

In January 2022 she was one of the speakers at a United Nations web event launching humanitarian appeals for Afghanistan and its region, along with Martin Griffiths, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Recognition She was the Asian regional winner of the UNHCR's Nansen Refugee Award for 2021. The award was presented in September 2021 at the Swiss Embassy in Islamabad, by the Swiss Ambassador Bénédict de Cerjat, and the Chargée d'affaires of Norway, Elin Kylvåg.