Dr. Massouda Jalal 
داکتر مسعوده جلال 

Dr. Massouda Jalal is the first woman in the history of Afghanistan who ran for the Office of the President of Afghanistan in 2002, 2004, and again in 2019. She was the elected Representative of Kabul province in 2002 for the Emergency Grand Assembly (for the election of the President of Afghanistan), in 2003 for the Constitutional General Assembly, and in 2010 for the Afghanistan Peace Assembly.

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Before joining politics, she was a professor at the Kabul Medical University, a co-founder of the Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan, and she worked at the leadership of UN Afghanistan. Between 2004 and 2006, she was the Minister of Women's Affairs in the cabinet of the government of Afghanistan and the head of the Commission for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

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She is also the Founding Director of the Jalal Foundation and the Freedom Message Newspaper in Afghanistan. She survived three targeted bombing attacks on her life and she was imprisoned due to her political ideology. Her three decades of work to promote human rights, women’s rights, democracy, rule of law, and peace in Afghanistan have been recognized by multiple awards and honors including the Human Rights Global Prize of the United Nations.