Jamila Afghani
Jamila Afghani (born 1976 in Kabul) is a Afghan feminist and activist who fights for women’s rights and education. She founded the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organization (NECDO) and serves as its executive director. She is also on the executive committee of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN). In 2022 she won the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.
As a child she had polio and used a leg brace. At 14 she was shot in the head during the Soviet war. She fled Kabul in the 1990s and moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Peshawar. Her first job was helping Afghan refugees and teaching women in camps through Qur’anic education.
She says that not having enough female teachers is a big barrier to girls’ education. In 2001 she started NECDO to help women and children access education. NECDO also teaches sign language and offers classes on conflict resolution and gender issues. The organization is known for creative ideas, such as a girls’ library that relied on boys to bring girls to visit, with prizes for the boys.
NECDO now serves about 50,000 women in 22 provinces. Afghani works to show that Islam does not justify violence against women. She created Afghanistan’s first gender-sensitive training for Imams. Imams began preaching the new material, and by 2015 about 6,000 Imams were involved. In Kabul, the program led to Friday sermons in many of the city’s mosques.
Her work has helped change minds, showing that Islam supports women’s rights and turning some men into supporters. She calls this a quiet revolution because religious leaders who once oppressed women now use Quranic language to promote fairness. She also challenges Afghanistan’s patriarchal tribal system and says the country must better distinguish Islam, culture, and politics. She has faced threats from people who oppose peaceful interpretations of Islam.
Awards: Tanenbaum Peacemaker in Action Award (2008). Aurora Prize: finalist in 2017, nominated in 2021, and laureate in 2022.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:49 (CET).