Roya Rahmani

Roya Rahmani (born May 1978) is an Afghan diplomat who served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the United States and non-resident ambassador to Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic from December 2018 to July 2021.

She is currently the Chair of the international advisory company in development finance — Delphos International LTD. She is also a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, and a senior fellow for international security at the New America Foundation.

Rahmani was born in Kabul in 1978, a year before Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.

After the Soviets left in 1989, the country descended into civil war.

Her school was closed for months at a time due to the missiles hitting the city.

She recalls “Starting in the ’90s, there was famine and drought, and during the 1992-96 civil war, we were literally pushed out of our homes.

I remember our family hugging each other, thinking this would be the last night of our lives”.

Once in Peshawar, she attended a Saudi-funded school for refugees, where she later recalled studying on the roof for an entire school year due to overcrowding.

Rahmani commented on her experiences saying that "As an Afghan woman, very early on, like the rest of my cohort, we learned that you have to try to make the best out of what you have. So uncertainty was what dominated most of our lives."

She says the experiences of her youth led her to the lifelong motto of "doing the best with what you have".

In 1993, her family fled to Pakistan.

Rahmani returned to Kabul in 1998, but refused to leave the house rather than put on a burqa as the Taliban required.

In 1999, she received a scholarship from the World University Service of Canada and went to McGill University, where she completed a bachelor's degree in software engineering.

She received a bachelor's degree in software engineering from McGill University in 2003 and a master's degree in public administration and international law at Columbia University in 2009.

After graduating in 2004, Rahmani returned to Afghanistan and worked for various nonprofits, eventually deciding to alter her career focus and return to school.

She says "It became like a mission in my life that if I could do anything, anything, to stop a bomb from going off and killing people, or even a person, if I could do that, my mission in life is completed."

After graduating with her bachelor's degree in 2004, Rahmani returned to Afghanistan and worked for several Canadian nonprofits focusing on human rights, women's empowerment, and education.

She also worked part-time as a subject matter expert with the NATO Joint Forces Training Center, and a consultant to the New York Department of Education, the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Department of Trade and International Affairs of Canada, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Women Living under Muslim Laws, and other INGOs.

During this time Rahmani worked on a marriage document that secured equitable rights for the family and contributed to data collection at a national level.

She received the Best Human Rights Activist Award from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in 2007 for her work on this document.

In 2009, she completed a master's degree in public administration and international law at Columbia University in New York.

She was a Fulbright scholar.

Rahmani joined the Afghan government, first in the Ministry of Education, then as a senior advisor to the Deputy Foreign Minister in 2011.

Previously, she worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as the first Director General of Regional Cooperation (2012-2016).

Before entering government, she worked for several nonprofits that primarily focused on women's rights and education.

From 2012 to 2016, she served as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for Regional Cooperation.

In this role she initiated and promoted important regional cooperation initiatives, like the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process.

From 2016 to 2018, she served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to Indonesia, first ever ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and non-resident ambassador to Singapore.

From June 2016-December 2018, Rahmani served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to Indonesia, non-resident ambassador to Singapore, and first ever ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

She was the second woman appointed as an ambassador by President Ashraf Ghani, after he vowed to give women more leadership positions.

She said Muslim women could introduce a narrative of a "dynamic Muslim", proving that religion is not a static force.

On 14 December 2018, Rahmani was appointed Ambassador to the United States by President Ghani, the first woman to hold the position.

She took up the post just as President Trump announced his intention to withdraw troops from her country.

She said, "women have been treated like a minority, but they are not a minority. Together, the women and the youth are actually a majority, and they are not willing to give up their rights. They are not willing to compromise their human rights and go back to the old days."

She replaced Hamdullah Mohib, who had resigned three months earlier to become National Security Advisor.

Ambassador Rahmani also served as Afghanistan's non-resident ambassador to Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.

Rahmani spent several years working at nonprofits that focused on women's rights and education.

At this time, her work focused particularly on family law reform in the Muslim context.

She worked with Musawah to reform a marriage contract in Afghanistan to ensure more equitable family rights.

Rahmani and Musawah "decided to prioritise the marriage contract because it seemed to be a feasible and practical remedy to secure the rights of women within families. Amending the family law required complex procedures, whereas the marriage contract only needed the Supreme Court’s approval”.