Hamoon Health Center

Malalai Joya (25) was born in Farah. She had her early schooling in Iran and Pakistan. After the Bonn Peace Accord of 2001 and the toppling of the Taliban regime, she returned to her hometown and started to work as a social worker and women’s rights activist. She has helped to establish the Hamoon Health Center to provide free medical treatment and medicines for children and unwaged women. She advocates women’s rights and human rights issues through meetings and the distribution of leaflets. She has also worked with the disabled, providing wheelchairs and prosthesis.

Malalai Joya (25) was born in Farah. She had her early schooling in Iran and Pakistan. After the Bonn Peace Accord and toppling the Taliban regime, she returned to her hometown and started to work as a social worker and women’s rights activist.

She has helped to establish a health center “Hamoon Health Center” to provide free medical treatment and medicines for children and unwaged women. She advocates women’s rights and human rights issues through meeting with all layers of people and by distributing leaflets in her hometown and the neighboring towns. She has also been working closely with the disabled by providing wheelchairs and prosthesis.

Joya is active at grassroots as well as governmental level. She has established an orphanage house that provides shelter and subsistence to children who have lost their parents in the war. She has established several adult literacy and computer science courses for women and youth in order to develop their work capacity and keep them up-to-date with modern Information technology.

Joya has been chosen as the women’s representative to the Constitution Forming Committee ‘Loya Jirga’ in Afghanistan. At this event, she voiced her opposition against the participation of the warlords in forming the Constitution. Her challenging speech has provoked them against her that she had to be escorted by security guards during the acts of the Loya Jirga.

Joya, along with other women delegates, has been loyal to defending women’s rights in the new Constitution of Afghanistan. She was motivated to finish her education and work as a health educator in the refugee camps in Pakistan. Her father, who had lost a leg in the war, was a member of the resistance against the Russian Occupation of Afghanistan.

With full strength, Joya was dedicated to become an advocate of women’s rights after witnessing the despotic and degraded attitude in which the mujahideen (Islamic militants) and the Taliban had towards women’s role. So, her start point was to educate women and girls by conducting adult literacy courses for them.

Her vision about a peaceful country is to disarm the militia groups and to end the cultivation and trade of poppy in the Afghanistan. A secure and peaceful society, Joya believes, will lead to the recognition and respect for women and human rights.