Sima Samar

Dr. Sima Samar (born February 4, 1957) is the Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and, since 2005, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan.

Biography
Samar was born in Jaghoori, Ghazni, Afghanistan on 4 February 1957. She obtained her degree in medicine in February 1982 from Kabul University, the first Hazara woman to do so. She practiced medicine at a government hospital in Kabul, but after a few months was forced to flee for her safety to her native Jaghoori, where she provided medical treatment to patients throughout the remote areas of central Afghanistan.

In 1984, the communist regime arrested her husband, and Samar and her young son fled to the safety of nearby Pakistan. She then worked as a doctor at the refugee branch of the Mission Hospital. Distressed by the total lack of health care facilities for Afghan refugee women, she established in 1989 the Shuhada Organization and Shuhada Clinic in Quetta, Pakistan. The Shuhada Organization was dedicated to the provision of health care to Afghan women and girls, training of medical staff and to education. In the following years further branches of the clinic/hospital were opened throughout Afghanistan.

After living in refuge for over a decade, Samar returned to Afghanistan in 2002 to assume a cabinet post in the Karzai-led Afghan Transitional Administration. In the interim government, she served as Deputy President and then as Minister for Women's Affairs. She was forced into resignation from her post after she was threatened with death and harassed for questioning conservative Islamic laws, especially sharia law, during an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. During the 2003 Loya Jirga, several religious conservatives took out an ad in a local newspaper calling Samar the Salman Rushdie of Afghanistan.

She currently heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

Dr. Samar publicly refuses to accept that women must be kept in purdah (secluded from the public) and speaks out against the wearing of the burqa (head-to-foot wrap), which was enforced first by the fundamentalist mujahideen and then by the Taliban. She also has drawn attention to the fact that many women in Afghanistan suffer from osteomalacia, a softening of the bones, due to an inadequate diet. Wearing the burqa reduces exposure to sunlight and aggravates the situation for women suffering from osteomalacia.

It is said that Sima has been in the leadership of Hezb-e-Wahdat e Islami Afghanistan (حزب وحدت اسلامی افغانستان) but she herself denies it. Wahdat Party has been accused of war crimes by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in the early 90's. documents

Awards
Dr. Samar has received numerous international awards for her work on human rights and democracy, including: the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership;


 * 1995 Global Leader for Tomorrow from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland;
 * The 1998 100 Heroines Award in the United States;
 * The Paul Grunninger Human Rights Award, Paul Grunninger Foundation, Switzerland March 2001;
 * The Voices of Courage Award, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, New York, June 2001;
 * The John Humphrey Freedom Award, Rights and Democracy, Canada December 2001;
 * Ms. magazine, Women of the Year on behalf of Afghan Women, USA December 2001;
 * Women of the Month, Toronto, Canada, December 2001;
 * Best Social Worker Award, Mailo Trust Foundation, Quetta, Pakistan March 2001;
 * International Human Rights Award, International Human Rights Law Group, Washington, DC April 2002;
 * Freedom Award, Women’s Association for Freedom and Democracy, Barcelona July 2002;
 * Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, New York October 2002;
 * The Perdita Huston Human Rights Award 2003; and the 2004 Profile in Courage Award.

Articles

 * Ms. magazine "A Voice for the Voiceless" Winter 2007 conversation with Sima Samar and Ms. executive editor Katherine Spillar.

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