Bios:
Hasina Safi has served as executive director of the Afghan Women’s Network, or AWN, since May 2013. During the past two decades she has worked for the International Rescue Committee (IRC); the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR); the International Organization for Migration (IOM); the Afghanistan Women’s Education Centre (AWEC); and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP). She has become one of the strategic advocators for women’s rights, representing civil society and Afghan women in national, regional, and international events such as the National Consultative Peace Jirga, traditional Jirga, London Conference, Kabul Conference, and Senior Officials Meetings (SOM).
Palwasha Hasan has more than 18 years of experience in women's development and empowerment projects and is the founding member of many existing networks and women and human rights groups, including the Afghan Women's Network, the Women and Street Children Project, and Roazana. She served as national director for ChildFund International in Afghanistan from 2011 to 2013. Palwasha has represented civil society groups in numerous constitutional and peacekeeping negotiations, including the Constitutional Loya Jirga, the Peace Jirga on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the National Consultative Peace Jirga, and the Afghanistan Reconstruction Forum in Tokyo and Kabul. Palwasha holds a master's degree in post-war recovery studies from York University in the United Kingdom and is a former fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace. She is one of the 1,000 women nominees for the Noble Peace Prize from Afghanistan.
Lida Nadery currently works as the deputy chief of party for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Land and Reform in Afghanistan, or LARA, project, where she oversees the implementation of land tenure reform for market development and develops processes that will improve land tenure security. She has served as an advisor for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in their efforts to include policy development and public policy advocacy in education for girls. A prominent face for women’s rights, she advocates for the implementation of the Elimination of Violence Against Women Law and other issues before the Afghan Parliament, as well as the cabinet and president’s office. Lida is also a co-founder of Modern Education for Development, a women’s empowerment organization that has already trained at least 500 women in public speaking and debate, so that women can carry out advocacy more effectively. She is also a board member for the Afghan Women’s Network and helped establish the Afghan Women’s Advocacy Coalition.
Mary Akrami has been the director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center, or AWSDC, since 1999. She set up AWSDC during her exile in Pakistan in order to build the capacity of Afghan women through English and computer literacy classes. In 2001, she represented Afghan civil society in Bonn and has since conveyed her experiences of civil society work at numerous international forums, including the World Social Forum in Brazil in 2005. Mary has continued her work with AWSDC since her return to Afghanistan, has been involved in shelters for battered women and microenterprise schemes for women, and has set up peace shuras and committees with strong female representation in the Parwan province.