Farkhunda Zahra Naderi

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi is an Afghan politician and women's right activist.

She is a member of the Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) chaired by Abdullah Abdullah.

Previously she served as a senior advisor to president Ashraf Ghani in United Nations Affairs.

Naderi was born on 19 April 1981 in Kabul.

She is the daughter of Sayed Mansoor Naderi, the leader of Ismaili Hazaras in Afghanistan.

Naderi attended primary and secondary school in Baghlan and Kabul provinces and completed her baccalaureate at Harrow College at Harrow, London in 2001.

She studied law at Westminster International University in Tashkent and graduated with a B.A degree from the same university in 2007.

Naderi through her parliamentary campaign wanted to define a responsible and professional political campaign which could reflect the values of democracy and professionalism within a traditional political environment.

Naderi regarded the political Campaign as a responsibility to candidates to raise awareness about democratic values such as democratic governance, social contract, the role of parliament and check and balance with their constituency.Therefore, her campaign included a range of methods and approaches such as organising theatre performance to educate the voters on how to vote, street campaigns, meeting people at her campaign office, organising public events, writing on newspapers to explain her views, passing message on radios and eventually appearing on tv to pass her messages.

She organised campaign rallies in different parts of Kabul City, sending campaigners knocking on citizens' doors to provide them with information about the candidate and her plan.

Before that she served as a member of Parliament (Wolesi Jirag/Lower House of Afghan Parliament from 2010–2015), where she was elected as an MP in the 2010 Afghan Parliamentary Election.

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi is a N-Peace Awardee, and a graduated YGL.

Naderi also took the challenge to run officially as the only political party candidate from the National Solidarity Party of Afghanistan from Kabul province in the 2010 parliamentary election because at the time the majority of members of different political parties run as independent candidates, rather than using the name of their political parties.

This was done due to the unpopular image and notion of political parties from the past.

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi argued if the existence of political party is regarded to be a heinous act within the political culture of Afghanistan, then Afghans must not participate in political parties at all, but if it is not, then why the members of political parties hide their political identity to mislead the public in order to get votes, instead of bringing public awareness regarding their political agenda and people's political rights.

Moreover, Naderi entered into the 2010 election campaigns with a challenging slogan of "Burka, the window of power; چادری، دریچه قدرت" and there were no pictures of her in the advertising materials and posters, as she wanted to encourage the public to concentrate on women candidates' platforms rather than their faces.

At university, Naderi conducted a research on the study of women's role within Afghan power, she was convinced the absence of Afghan women in the Supreme Court is the real challenge for the symbolic presence of women in the Afghan politics.

In the 2010 parliamentary campaign, Naderi promised to fight for women's participation in the Supreme Court of Afghanistan.

Naderi succeeded to break the taboo by raising voice in the parliament, working with civil society to political groups from national to international level.

Eventually, a woman for the first time in the history of Afghanistan was introduced in the Supreme Court by President Ghani in National Unity Government of Afghanistan (Nug).

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi was nominated by UNDP for the 2012 N-Peace Award.

In 2013, Naderi changed the role of Afghan Parliament from a participatory delegates to a politically active players by entering the election in Inter-Parliamentary Union and being elected as the first Afghan MP to one of the Three Standing Committees; the Committee on Democracy and Human Rights in Inter-Parliamentary Union.

In March 2013, Naderi obtained the membership of third Standing Committee (Human Rights & Democracy) at IPU's 128th Assembly held in Ecuador.

In the election between Afghanistan, Australia and Iran representatives, Naderi got 28 votes out of 52, while the Australian and Iranian parliamentarians got 20 and 3 votes respectively.

In March 2014, at the 130th Assembly of IPU, Naderi strengthened the role of Afghan parliament further by becoming the President of the mentioned committee through another election.

Naderi left the parliament after its 5th year, because according to Afghan Constitution Afghan Parliament's legal term was terminated, but instead of holding a parliamentary election, President Ghani extended its term by passing a decree.

Naderi found this action in violation of the social contract between people and the MPs and in breach of democratic values.

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi worked as a senior advisor to President Ashraf Ghani on UN affairs, from December 2016 to November 2018.

In this position her mission was to prepare the One UN document.

Naderi with her UN counterparts prepared the document of One UN with two attachments of mutual accountability and Action plan to the President.

The document directs the activities of UN agencies in a more coordinated, effective and sustainable manner.

She developed the One UN document with an aim to establish coordination, accountability, transparency and efficiency for the aids and operations of the UN agencies in Afghanistan.

The document also focuses on the adaption of the UN agencies programs with the priorities and strategies of the Afghan people.

Naderi was appointed to Senior Advisory position via presidential decree released in December 2016.

She resigned from her post as the senior advisor to President Ashraf Ghaniover what she called to be as "serious disagreements".

It took eight months for her to resign from Arg.

The document was completed and sent for Presiden's signature in early 2018 to be later send for execution, but it was never signed; and no further clarification was provided about it.

Furthermore, Naderi opened the door of the arg (the palace) to general public especially to youth by establishing The Arg and Citizen Debate, Citizen Wall, and the Civil Society Dialogue, co-organizing it with the UN Women.

However, when she held a press conference in Gmic, after her resignation in November 2018, she shared the report of her work as the senior advisor to the president with the public.But she avoided to answer media's questions regarding her resignation, instead she encouraged them to hold her accountable for the performance of her service in Arg

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