Fawzia Koofi

Fawzia Koofi's memoir, The Favored Daughter: One Woman’s Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future, is an autobiographical memoir written by Fawzia Koofi with the aid of Nadene Ghouri. Originally published under the title Letters to My Daughter, this edition was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. The book tells the story of Koofi's life throughout her childhood, education, and involvement in politics. It consists of narrations about her life interspersed with letters written to her two daughters.

Koofi intended to run for President of Afghanistan in the 2014 Afghan presidential election on a platform of equal rights for women, promoting universal education, and the opposition to political corruption, but she said in July 2014 that the election commission moved the registration date to October 2013 and as a result she did not qualify for the minimum age requirement of 40 years of age.

She was re-elected as a member of Parliament in 2014 but no longer serves as the deputy speaker. She currently serves as Chairperson of Afghanistan's Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission.

In 2014, she visited students who are victims of the Taliban and encourages them to continue their education.

She has survived several assassination attempts, including one on March 8, 2010, near the town of Tora Bora.

In Parliament, she has focused primarily on women's rights, but she also has legislated for the building of roads to connect remote villages to educational and health facilities. In 2009 Ms. Koofi drafted the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) legislation. Signed as a decree, the draft needed to be voted on in order to become an official document of the constitution. It was presented to Parliament in 2013 and was blocked by the conservative members who claimed articles of the law went against Islam. However, the law is being implemented in all 34 provinces in Afghanistan and court cases are being decided based on the law.

In the parliamentary elections in 2005, she was elected to the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan National Assembly, for the Badakhshan district in the northeastern part of the country and served as the Deputy Speaker of the lower house whose president also carries the title of Vice President of the National Assembly. She was the first female Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament in the history of Afghanistan. She was re-elected in the parliamentary elections of 2010 and then elected MP from a total of 69 female members of the Assembly.

Koofi also promoted education for women and children by advocating for access to good schools and creating opportunities for non-formal education for her constituents in Badakhshan province. While serving as Deputy Speaker in 2005, Ms. Koofi raised private funding for the construction of girls schools in remote provinces. In 2009, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Koofi was married to a man named Hamid, an engineer and chemistry teacher. Her marriage was arranged, but she did not disapprove of her family's choice. Ten days after their wedding, Taliban soldiers arrested her husband and he was imprisoned. In prison he contracted tuberculosis and died shortly after his release in 2003. Koofi lives in Kabul with her two teenage daughters.

Koofi originally wanted to become a physician, but chose to study political science and become a member of UNICEF. She worked closely with vulnerable groups such as Internally Displaced People (IDP) and marginalized women and children, and served as a child protection officer for the organization from 2002 to 2004.

From 2002 to 2004 Fawzia Koofi worked with UNICEF as a Child Protection Officer to protect children from violence, exploitation and abuse.

Koofi began her political career in 2001 after the fall of the Taliban, promoting the right to education of girls in her "Back to school" campaign.

She managed to persuade her parents to send her to school, making her the only girl in the family to attend school. She subsequently graduated from university with a master's degree in business and management. Her father was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 25 years but died at the end of the first Afghan war (1979–1989), killed by Mujahideens.

Fawzia Koofi (Persian: فوزیه کوفی ‎) (born in 1975) is an Afghan politician and women's rights activist. Originally from Badakhshan province, she is currently serving as a Member of Parliament in Kabul and is the Vice President of the National Assembly.