NO to Fawzia Koofi’s participation in the Oslo Conference

Tomorrow, September 5, the Woman, life freedom conference will be held in Oslo, to which Fawzia Koofi, a member of a very influential family and former Afghan parliamentarian, has been invited as a speaker. CISDA and the Afghan organizations with which we collaborate have repeatedly highlighted how this lady and her family have been responsible for abuse and corruption in their country. For this reason, last June, CISDA sent a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Below is the text of the letter in Italian, while here you can download the original in English sent to the Institute.

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Dear gentlemen of the Nobel Peace Center,

we are an Italian organization that has been working alongside some Afghan women’s associations since 1999; in all these years we have had the opportunity, on many occasions, to meet Afghan women in their country, to understand how much strength and determination they put into wanting to rise from a heavy condition of oppression through work, study, awareness of their rights.

Afghan women know very well that none of the regimes or governments that have followed one another in recent decades have really worked to guarantee them a dignified and free life.

Their tireless work continues today, despite the difficulties and threats.

You are certainly aware of the inhuman rules that the Taliban regime imposes on women and girls. For over 1000 days, girls have not been able to continue their studies after primary school and are forced to suffer what we can define as gender apartheid.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prevents women from educating.

In Afghanistan, women have been deprived of every right: they cannot travel, work, have adequate medical care and live an independent life.

We have learned that on September 5, 2024, in Oslo, the conference Woman, life freedom will be held, to which Fawzia Koofi, a member of a very influential family and a former Afghan parliamentarian, has been invited as a speaker. Well, this lady and her family have been responsible for abuse and corruption in their country.

Mrs. Fawzia Koofi and her sister Mariam have always used their political power to protect their brothers, who were prosecuted for drug trafficking. She herself has always taken advantage of her position to keep for herself or divert to her own business a good part of the funding received from Western governments in order to build schools or houses for the neediest.

See also this post.

All this was denounced by the inhabitants of the region (Badakhshan) of which she was a parliamentary representative and accompanied by photos and documents (See the real face of Fawzia Koofi and her corrupt family! « RAWA News)

In her role as a parliamentarian and vice president of the Afghan National Assembly, Fawzia Koofi was responsible for supporting a corrupt and incompetent government, made up of warlords who often owed their power not to their political skills but to the atrocities they committed. And the purely marginal and formal role of women within it does not diminish the responsibility of those who agreed to endorse it for personal gain.

Fawzia Koofi also agreed to endorse the agreements between the US and the Taliban in 2020, in Doha, to allow their return to power, participating directly in the negotiations and providing a veneer of democracy to a maneuver that fell on the shoulders of the Afghan people, women in particular, while the rulers of the time fled the country, as she did.

We report here the words of Belquis Roshan, an opposition senator in the upper house of the Afghan Parliament during the previous government, forced to leave her country and now a refugee in Europe, who on 26 August 2023, during a meeting with Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan and delegates to the first UN session to discuss “gender apartheid” in Afghanistan, declared: “Women who protest are attacked, so international institutions should be their voice. Instead of sponsoring some Taliban lobbyists who are the cause of this miserable situation, women who are fighting bravely in Afghanistan against the Taliban should be given the opportunity to make their pro-democracy cries heard and be listened to”.

We consider the facts attributed to Mrs. Koofi very serious and ask you to consider and verify our complaint.