Farida Azizi
Afghanistan

Farida Azizi is Senior Advisor for the Afghan Women's Program with the Vital Voices Global Partnership, where she works to shape the organization's support for women's programs in Afghanistan. Prior to her arrival in the United States in 2000 as a refugee, she served as a program officer for Norwegian Church Aid's work in Afghanistan, supervising the women's programs implemented by NCA's 20 partner organizations. Through her regular travel inside Afghanistan, Ms. Azizi maintained close contact with women in different parts of the country. With her culturally and religiously sensitive approach to grassroots activism, she gained permission from the Taliban to train Afghan women in healthcare work. Ms. Azizi is a member of the Afghan Women's Network, based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and has completed a certificate course in peace building at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Ms. Azizi's peace-building activities include:

• addressing the United States Congress on women's participation in peace building and reconstruction in conjunction with the Summit for Afghan Women;
• participating as a member of a distinguished panel of human rights leaders at Stop Human Rights Violations Against Women, an event on Capitol Hill in support of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women;
• supervising capacity-building programs for women in peace building;
• co-founding the Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a network committed to developing peace capacities at the grassroots level-still a member of the group's working committee, she raises funds and locates educational facilities for their training programs;
• working to distribute foreign aid fairly to reduce chances of creating ethnic fighting as a result of unfair aid distribution and educating foreign aid workers about Afghan society and cultural sensitivity to increase the efficacy of their work in that country;
• creating peace-education workshops for children and working to replace violence-filled textbooks with more neutral materials;
• pioneering peace building at the grassroots level through aid programming and promotion of the "Do No Harm" concept within Afghanistan's aid community; and
• promoting the human rights of Afghan women through advocacy at international conferences in Bangladesh, India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere.

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