Masuda Sultan

Afghanistan

After years of repression under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s women are once again entering public life. Masuda Sultan is program director of Women for Afghan Women (WAW), an organization providing assistance to, and a platform for, women’s rights activists. She spearheads the group’s congressional and international advocacy and works on community outreach and support for WAW’s Afghan Women’s Fund, which organizes programs for widows and orphans—including schools, poultry farms, and sewing and carpet weaving classes. Ms. Sultan lost 19 members of her extended family during the American bombing campaign to remove the Taliban. A member of the Advisory Board of the Business Council for Peace, Ms. Sultan provides advice on the economic empowerment of Afghan women. She is a founder of the Young Afghan-World Alliance, an organization coordinating humanitarian aid initiatives in the country. As a member of the Electoral College of Afghanistan-USA, she represented New York’s Afghan-American community in the process leading up to the Loya Jirga. She holds a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Queens College in New York City.

Ms. Sultan’s peace-building activities include:

• organizing the September conference “Women and the Constitution: Kandahar 2003,” where women from across Afghanistan discussed the future constitution and drafted an Afghan Women’s Bill of Rights, which was endorsed in principle by President Hamid Karzai and the Constitutional Commission;
• advocating for US reconstruction money to be earmarked for Afghan women, including recent collaboration with Congresswoman Maloney’s office on an amendment dedicating $60 million of aid to women’s programs and $5 million to the Human Rights Commission;
• working with the group September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to lobby Congress for aid targeted to civilian victims of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan;
• authoring “Hope in Afghanistan,” which appeared in WAW’s recent book, Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future;
• creating forums in Afghanistan for local women to develop programs and participate in human rights advocacy; and
• speaking publicly on the war in Afghanistan and the country’s transition to democracy.
• producing and having a lead role in “From Ground Zero to Ground Zero,” the first documentary on Afghan civilian casualties to air on US television, later shown in Europe and Japan.

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