Fawzia Koofi

Fawzia Koofi (born 1975) is an Afghan politician, writer and women's rights activist from Badakhshan province, ethnically Tajik. ¹ She was a member of the Wolesi Jirga from 2005 to 2021 and the first female Second Deputy Speaker of the Afghan parliament, drafted the Elimination of Violence Against Women legislation, and sat on the Afghan government's peace negotiation team with the Taliban. ^{1 2}

Koofi's father was a member of parliament for 25 years who was killed by mujahideen at the end of the Afghan war of 1979–1989. ¹ Born into a polygamous family, she was, by the article's account of her memoir, left out to die in the sun on the day she was born because she was a girl, and survived. ¹ She persuaded her parents to send her to school, the only girl in her family to attend, began medical studies, and was barred from continuing when the Taliban banned women from education after 1996; after 2001 she completed a master's degree in business and management at Preston University. ¹

From 2001 she promoted girls' education in her "Back to school" campaign, and from 2002 to 2004 she served as a child protection officer for UNICEF, working with internally displaced people and marginalised women and children. ¹

In the 2005 parliamentary elections she was elected to the Wolesi Jirga for Badakhshan and became the first female Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Afghanistan's history; she was re-elected in 2010. ¹ In Parliament she focused on women's rights and on roads connecting remote villages to schools and clinics. ¹ In 2009 she drafted the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) legislation; when it was presented to Parliament in 2013 it was blocked by conservative members who claimed articles of the law went against Islam — a claim reported here as theirs — while the decree continued to be applied in the provinces and in court cases. ¹ She later chaired Afghanistan's Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission. ¹

Koofi survived several assassination attempts, including one on 8 March 2010 near Tora Bora. ¹ In 2020 she joined the 21-member team negotiating peace with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government; on 14 August 2020 gunmen shot her in the arm in an assassination attempt near Kabul as she returned from Parwan province with her sister. ¹ After the Taliban takeover of August 2021 she was placed under house arrest in Kabul, then left Afghanistan and has lived in exile in London with her two daughters. ¹ In 2024 Parliamentarians for Global Action named her a Defender of Democracy Award recipient, describing her as a leading Afghan politician and fierce champion of women's rights whose work made her a target. ²

Her autobiographical memoir, first published as Letters to My Daughters (2011) and in the United States as The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future (2012), tells her life interleaved with letters to her two daughters. ¹ She was recognised as one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2013. ¹

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