Roya Rahmani


Roya Rahmani is an Afghan diplomat who has served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to the United States and non-resident ambassador to Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic since December 2018 and Bolivia. From 2016-2018, she served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to Indonesia, first ever ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and non-resident ambassador to Singapore.
Previously, she worked for Afghanistan's Ministry of Education as a Planning and Evaluation Advisor. She later joined Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as a senior advisor to the Deputy Foreign Minister, then as Director General of Regional Cooperation Initiatives.
Before entering government, she worked for several nonprofits that primarily focused on women's rights and education. She received a bachelor’s degree in software engineering from McGill University in 2003 and a master’s degree in public administration and international law at Columbia University in 2009.

Early life and education

Rahmani was born in Kabul in 1978, a year before Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. After the Soviets left in 1989, the country descended into civil war. Her school was closed for months at a time due to the missiles hitting the city. In 1993, her family fled to Pakistan. She recalls “Starting in the ’90s, there was famine and drought, and during the 1992-96 civil war, we were literally pushed out of our homes. I remember our family hugging each other, thinking this would be the last night of our lives”.
Once in Peshawar, she attended a Saudi-funded school for refugees, where she later recalled studying on the roof for an entire school year due to overcrowding. Rahmani commented on her experiences saying that "As an Afghan woman, very early on, like the rest of my cohort, we learned that you have to try to make the best out of what you have. So uncertainty was what dominated most of our lives." She says the experiences of her youth led her to the lifelong motto of "doing the best with what you have".
Rahmani returned to Kabul in 1998, but refused to leave the house rather than put on a burqa as the Taliban required. In 1999, she received a scholarship from the World University Service of Canada and went to McGill University, where she completed a bachelor's degree in software engineering. After graduating in 2004, Rahmani returned to Afghanistan and worked for various nonprofits, eventually deciding to alter her career focus and return to school. She says "It became like a mission in my life that if I could do anything, anything, to stop a bomb from going off and killing people, or even a person, if I could do that, my mission in life is completed."
In 2009, she completed a master's degree in public administration and international law at Columbia University in New York. She was a Fulbright scholar.

Career

Nonprofit Work

After graduating with her bachelor's degree in 2004, Rahmani returned to Afghanistan and worked for several Canadian nonprofits focusing on human rights, women’s empowerment, and education. She also worked part-time as a subject matter expert with the NATO Joint Forces Training Center, and a consultant to the New York Department of Education, the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Department of Trade and International Affairs of Canada, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, Women Living under Muslim Laws, and other INGOs.
During this time Rahmani worked on a marriage document that secured equitable rights for the family and contributed to data collection at a national level. She received the Best Human Rights Activist Award from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in 2007 for her work on this document.

Government Work

Rahmani joined the Afghan government, first in the Ministry of Education, then as a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Foreign Minister in 2011. From 2012-2016, she served as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for Regional Cooperation. In this role she initiated and promoted important regional cooperation initiatives, like the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process.

Ambassador to Indonesia

From June 2016-December 2018, Rahmani served as Afghanistan's first female ambassador to Indonesia, non-resident ambassador to Singapore, and first ever ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She was the second woman appointed as an ambassador by President Ashraf Ghani, after he vowed to give women more leadership positions. She said Muslim women could introduce a narrative of a "dynamic Muslim", proving that religion is not a static force.

Ambassador to the United States

On 14 December 2018, Rahmani was appointed Ambassador to the United States by President Ghani, the first woman to hold the position. She took up the post just as President Trump announced his intention to withdraw troops from her country. She said, "women have been treated like a minority, but they are not a minority. Together, the women and the youth are actually a majority, and they are not willing to give up their rights. They are not willing to compromise their human rights and go back to the old days." She replaced Hamdullah Mohib, who had resigned three months earlier to become National Security Advisor.
Ambassador Rahmani also serves as Afghanistan's non-resident ambassador to Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.

Issues

Women's rights

Rahmani spent several years working at nonprofits that focused on women's rights and education. At this time, her work focused particularly on family law reform in the Muslim context. She worked with Musawah to reform a marriage contract in Afghanistan to ensure more equitable family rights. Rahmani and Musawah "decided to prioritise the marriage contract because it seemed to be a feasible and practical remedy to secure the rights of women within families. Amending the family law required complex procedures, whereas the marriage contract only needed the Supreme Court’s approval”.
Rahmani also took part in the inaugural Indonesian Congress of Women Ulama while serving as ambassador to Indonesia. She encouraged the formation of more women's ulamas, saying "It's time to get angry about violence committed in the name of our religion that we practice every day to seek refuge and peace."
After becoming ambassador to the United States, she continued to advocate for women's rights, especially women's role in the peace process. She has consistently said that a peace deal that ignores half of the population will not work. She argues the essential role of women in the peace process makes women's rights not just an ethical issue, but a matter of national security.

Peace process

In May 2019, Rahmani criticized the Trump government after Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad engaged in direct talks with the Taliban, who have rejected engaging in talks with the Afghan government, saying "They are not our government, they are not our representatives" and that ending the war "should be decided by the people who are most affected by the process."
TIME Magazine referred to Rahmani as "a fierce advocate for peace on Afghan terms". She has spoken repeatedly on the need for the Taliban to directly engage with Afghan society and government if they are to become a part of it. According to Rahmani, "if want peace, they would have to sit with the government."

Awards and Recognitions

Personal life

Rahmani is married and has one daughter, born in 2014. She is a Muslim. She is a fluent in Dari, Pashto, and English, and has a basic understanding of Urdu and French.