Afghanistan Women Council

The AWC is a non-governmental, nonprofit, non-sectarian organization and is not affiliated with any political party. It was established in Peshawar, Pakistan, to serve Afghan refugees. After the regime change in 1992 AWC opened an office in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 2001 AWC moved its head office to Kabul with regional offices in Kandahar and Jalalabad.

AWC runs the Ariana School, the Mother and Child Health Clinic in Peshawar, which provides education and medical care to refugee families, and the Nazo AnaClinic, a 20-bed hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, that kept its doors open throughout all five years of the Taliban regime. AWC also manages humanitarian relief efforts for newly-arrived refugees and publishes the monthly journal, Zan-e-Afghan (Aghan Women) to mobilize women to bring peace and stability to the country.

Mrs. Gailani represented Afghan women at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 and at the 1997 Post-Beijing Follow-up Conference in Thailand. She has traveled to various countries around the world to participate in workshops, seminars, conferences, meetings and presentations of human rights, women’s rights and refugee rights and attended management courses. She lived 20 years in Pakistan and 3 years in Switzerland as an Afghan Refugee. She received death threats from the Taliban and in 1999 Amnesty International issued an urgent action bulletin calling for her enhanced protection.