Beyond Victims #2025 -Afghanistan Edition
- CGAP South Asia
- Nov 20
- 4 min read
Our sixth edition of 2025 Beyond Victims Series brings you stories of inspiring women political leaders from Afghanistan.
Dive in to read stories of Dr Massouda Jalal, Farzana Kochai, Shinkai Karokhail, Salima Mazari, Elay Ershad & Maryam Rayed.
Dr. Massouda Jalal (First Afghan Woman Presidential Candidate & Former Minister)
Dr. Massouda, from Kapisa, Afghanistan, is the country’s first woman to run for president (2002, 2004, later again active in 2019), breaking a glass ceiling on women’s leadership in national politics.
As Minister of Women’s Affairs (2004–2006), she steered core gender-policy architecture, personally heading the commission that drafted the foundational Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) and contributing to the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan (NAPWA), to move constitutional protections from rhetoric into state policy. She later founded the Jalal Foundation to organize women’s councils and train new leaders, and has kept up global advocacy, including a Jean Monnet Lecture in 2022 and a 2019 warning that Afghanistan’s repression fuels regional and global instability. In 2025, she and her daughter Husna Jalal received the International Women’s Rights Award at the Geneva Summit, underlining her continuing role as a change-maker in exile.
- Multiple Sources
Farzana Kochai (Former Afghan MP & Voice of Kuchi Women)
Farzana, from Baghlan, is a former Afghan MP who represented the Kuchi (Kochi) nomadic community in the Wolesi Jirga (the Lower House of Afghanistan’s National Assembly) after the 2018 elections.
As one of the youngest women in parliament, in her debates she focuses on accountability for women’s rights and gender balance in state institutions, then chose to stay in Kabul during the August 2021 takeover to publicly resist the erasure of women from public life before later moving to safety and continuing advocacy in exile. She now uses global platforms to keep Afghan women’s voices audible, helping convene Wolesi Jirga meetings in exile and speaking on freedom of expression.
- Multiple Sources
Shinkai Karokhail, (Former MP, Diplomat & Co-founder of AWEC
Born in Kabul, Shinkai is an Afghan politician and women’s rights advocate who was elected multiple times to the Wolesi Jirga to represent Kabul. She co-founded the Afghan Women’s Educational Center (AWEC), one of Afghanistan’s earliest women-led NGOs, providing education, literacy training, and livelihood programs for women displaced by war. She co-led the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, helping advance the EVAW law and pressing for reform of discriminatory family codes to expand women’s rights in marriage and inheritance. Later appointed Ambassador to Canada, she focused on sustaining Afghanistan’s global partnerships and refugee support networks. In exile, she remains one of the most consistent Afghan voices calling for international accountability for women’s erasure under the Taliban, and for keeping Afghan women’s institutions alive through transnational collaboration.
- Multiple Sources
Salima Mazari (Former District Governor & Commander of Local Resistance)
Salima Mazari, from the Hazara minority, served as District Governor of Charkint District, Balkh Province from 2018 to 2021, one of only three women ever to hold such a role in Afghanistan. In her tenure, she became a symbol of local resistance and pragmatic leadership: organizing community defense forces, negotiating peaceful surrenders of Taliban fighters, and at times personally leading operations to defend her district.
She also expanded education access for girls, established local women’s councils, and advocated for hazard pay and recognition for female government employees. After the Taliban’s return, she refused evacuation until Charkint fell, later escaping under perilous conditions. In exile, Mazari continues to speak internationally on women’s political participation in conflict zones, urging recognition of local women leaders as essential actors in security and peacebuilding.
- Multiple Sources
Elay Ershad, (Former MP & Chair of Education Committee, Afghanistan)
Elay, a former MP (Wolesi Jirga), is a lawyer, educator, and political reformer. As chair of the Committee on Education, Higher Education, Cultural Affairs, and Religious Affairs, she advanced policy discussions on school reform, academic freedom, and inclusion in religious education. Earlier, she served as advisor to the Ministries of Interior and Education, promoting gender integration in policing and curricula. Following the fall of Kabul, Ershad became an outspoken critic of President Ghani’s flight from the country, condemning elite abandonment while ordinary Afghans bore the cost of war. She continues to collaborate with international parliamentarian networks, testifying on the role of women in security sector reform and education under repression, and remains an active political voice for a democratic, inclusive Afghanistan in exile.
- Multiple Sources
Maryam Rayed (Policy Leader & Founder, Afghan Women's Think Tank)
Maryam represents a new generation of Afghan policymakers bridging academia and activism. Trained in Sociology and Women’s Studies at Kabul University and a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University in Governance and Democracy, she became Deputy Director for Foreign Relations and Human Rights at the State Ministry for Peace, helping design youth and women’s inclusion in the intra-Afghan peace talks. She founded the Afghan Women’s Think Tank (AWTT) to create data-driven policy recommendations and train women to engage in elections, conflict resolution, and civic leadership. Rayed’s work emphasizes bottom-up democracy and gender-responsive governance, ensuring that Afghan women remain part of peace and reconstruction dialogues globally. In exile, she continues mentoring young Afghan scholars and advocates, linking women’s voices inside Afghanistan with policy circles abroad through the AWTT and regional academic networks.
- Multiple Sources
Project Manager: Riya Hira
Contributors: Alessandra Ghitturi
Edited by: Sugandha Parmar
Design: Riya Hira
Template: Vida Seraphina (https://vidaseraphina.dk/)
Sources:
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