Fawzia Koofi, Afghan presidential candidate and human rights activist, will deliver a public lecture at the Woodrow Wilson School on Tuesday, February 12, 2013, at 7:00 p.m., Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall, on the Princeton University campus. The lecture, "Political Transition, the Role of Women, and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan," is co-sponsored by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD) and the Woodrow Wilson School and is free and open to the public.

Fawzia Koofi currently serves as a member of Afghanistan's Parliament representing Badakhshan Province, and is the vice president of the National Assembly. She 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. In the parliamentary elections in 2005, she was elected to the National Assembly for the Badakhshan district in the northeastern part of the country and became its vice president. 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 has announced her intention to run for the Afghan presidency in the 2014 elections.

Koofi has made it a priority to defend women's rights in Afghanistan. Some of the key women’s initiatives she has championed during her tenure in parliament include the improvement of women’s living conditions in Afghan prisons, the establishment of a commission to combat the issue of violence (especially sexual violence) against children, and the amendment of the shia personal status law. She also promotes education for women and children by advocating for access to good schools and creating opportunities for non-formal education. In 2009, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.   Fawzia Koofi is the author of “Letters to My Daughters” (2011) and “The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future” (2012).
 
The event will be archived online for later viewing on the Woodrow Wilson School’s web media site – http://wws.princeton.edu/webmedia.