Sima Wali

That same year, Wali served as the chief organizer of the Afghan Women's Summit for Democracy in Brussels, Belgium, an unparalleled gathering of its kind. The summit was convened with the help of Equality Now, UNIFEM, the Gender Advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General, along with a coalition of women's organizations. According to Equality Now, the Afghan Women’s Summit "adopted an historic expression of the long held dreams and aspirations of Afghan women, together with a list of concrete demands for immediate implementation relating to the reconstruction of Afghanistan."

Wali died on September 22, 2017 in Falls Church, Virginia from multiple system atrophy at the age of 66.

Wali co-authored Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (2009) with Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould. Fitgerald and Gould, along with RefWID, also produced the documentary film The Woman in Exile Returns: The Sima Wali Story. It tells the story of Wali's return to Kabul in October 2002 after 24 years in exile and her work to help in the rebuilding efforts.

While she was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2005 to launch a project on building democracy among women, Wali narrowly escaped death at the hands of Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and Pakistani militants. Although she had received a death threat from the Taliban before, this was the closest she had come to being killed by forces opposed to her work.

In June 2003, Wali was accompanied by Women's Edge co-founder and executive director Ritu Sharma on a human rights advocacy mission to Afghanistan. It was one of several trips Wali undertook to her homeland and to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, where she led dozens of training and empowerment seminars. Wali often spoke out against "the constant marginalization" of females in refugee and post-war societies, calling for training that helps those women to become leaders.

She delivered the keynote address at the United Nations' celebration of International Women's Day in 2002, speaking alongside U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, First Lady Laura Bush, and Queen Noor of Jordan.

"For more than twenty years, I have waged my own jihad for social justice and peace, as the rights of my Afghan sisters have been systematically violated to the extent of rendering us as non-citizens in our own country. Afghan women have suffered heinous crimes against humanity, and need diplomatic and financial leverage from the international community to aid them in their fight to reclaim their rightful place in Afghan and international society." -Sima Wali at the United Nations, 2002

Sima Wali was conferred honorary doctorate degrees by both Smith College and Shenandoah University in 2002 and 2003, respectively. She earned her master's degree in International Relations from American University's School of International Service (SIS); and, she received her bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Kabul University.

In 2001, Sima Wali was one of only three female delegates at the U.N.-organized Bonn Agreement in Germany, which formed a new Afghan government, following the fall of the Taliban. She served as a representative of King Mohammed Zahir Shah's Rome delegation.

"Women must be actively involved in negotiating peace. As non-combatants, they are best equipped in building and sustaining a culture of peace. We will no longer stand to settle for decisions that are not gender-sensitive as we form the future of our war-ravaged nation." -Sima Wali in Bonn, Germany, 2001

She was also a speaker at the Ford Hall Forum in 1999 and 2009, and she has been a participant in the Dropping Knowledge project, among many other prestigious events and notable institutions.

"The United States helped create and support the 'Holy Warriors,' the most fanatic group that got the lion's share of the weapons from the U.S. It's played a major role in the Afghanistan situation by basically financing the war, and it now has a responsibility to help finance peace. The women and their children have borne the brunt, but the U.S. must now use its leverage to find peace and bring about a resolution." -Sima Wali in San Francisco, California, 1998

According to the NGO Dropping Knowledge, "Wali has pioneered in developing program models aimed at empowering women affected by conflict, rebuilding post-conflict democratic civil society institutions, and advocating for human rights protection of women and their male counterparts." In the 1990s, Wali played a strong role in supporting the development of NGOs in Bosnia and Croatia during the war in what was then Yugoslavia.

Since their ascent in the mid-1990s, Wali had been a vocal opponent of the Taliban's ideology. At the State of the World Forum in 1998, she said:

Wali's writings have been published in prominent journals, newspapers and books. In Women in Exile, she relates some of the harrowing details of her escape from Afghanistan in 1978.

Prior to her exile to the United States in 1978, Wali worked for the American Embassy in Kabul and the U.S. Peace Corps.

Sima Wali (April 7, 1951 – September 22, 2017) was one of the foremost Afghan human rights advocates in the world, serving as an international campaigner for the liberties and empowerment of refugee and internally displaced populations. She was the Chief Executive Officer of Refugee Women in Development (RefWID), Inc., a global non-profit organization that advocated for the civil rights of refugee women and girls fleeing from conflict and for their equitable reintegration into their societies. She was also the vice president of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, the world’s first feminist think tank.