Doctor, women's and human rights activist, former Minister for Women's Affairs in Afghanistan
Sima Samar, born in 1957, founded the Shuhada organization in 1989 and developed it further in the years that followed. Since then, the organization has run over a hundred schools and dozens of clinics and medical centers.
Samar served in the Afghan interim government and chaired the Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission from 2002 to 2019. Having served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan from 2005 to 2009, she was later appointed to high-ranking positions at the UN.
She is currently a visiting lecturer at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Boston, USA. Numerous international awards, such as the Paul Grüninger Prize in 2001, the Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award in 2008, and the “Alternative Nobel Prize” in 2012, underscore her extraordinary commitment. Her autobiography, "Mit zwölf wusste ich, dass Afghanistan sich verändern muss" (English version "Outspoken. My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan", Turnaround, 2024), will be published in German by rüffer&rub Sachbuchverlag (August 2025).
Photo: © Goran Basic
Friday, 21. November 2025, 19:00 – 20:00 h
At Literaturhaus Zurich, Limmatquai 62, 8001 Zürich
The story of Afghan woman Sima Samar is moving. Her husband was arrested in 1979 during the presidency of Nur Muhammad Taraki. He remained missing. She herself fled to Pakistan, where she set up a hospital for women and children in the bordear town of Quetta.
In 1989, Sima Samar founded the Shuhada organization, which is dedicated to the development of women's and human rights, medical care for the population, and the establishment of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sima Samar quickly realized that she also had to become politically involved in order to bring about change in her country. In 2001, she was appointed Minister for Women's Affairs in the Afghan government and was one of President Hamid Karzai's five deputies until her resignation in 2002.
In June 2002, the Independent Afghan Human Rights Commission was formed with Sima Samar as its chair. She spoke tirelessly at international conferences about the situation of the people in Afghanistan, while continuing her work for her organization Shuhada.
In 2021, she left Kabul for the US shortly before the Taliban regained power. She now teaches women's and human rights at Tufts University in Boston.