Speaker - Massouda Jalal

Geneva Summit Speaker - Massouda Jalal

Massouda Jalal was the only female candidate in the 2004 Afghan presidential election. She lives in Kabul and has a background as a pediatrician, a teacher at Kabul University, and a UN World Food Programme worker.

Born in Gul Bahar in Kapisa Province to a family of seven children, Jalal moved to Kabul to attend high school. She later attended Kabul University, where she was a member of the faculty until 1996, when the Taliban government had her removed. Jalal, a psychiatrist and pediatrician, also worked at several Kabul hospitals and, after her removal from the university faculty, as a United Nations employee within the World Food Programme. Her husband is a law instructor at Kabul University; they have three children.

Although she was uninvolved in politics during the Taliban regime, Jalal emerged after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 as a leading voice for the role of women in Afghan society. She was the representative of her Kabul neighborhood to the 2002 Loya Jirga and was among the candidates considered to lead Afghanistan as interim president, but she placed a distant second to Hamid Karzai, with support from only 171 of the 1575 delegates. Having turned down a position as vice-president within Karzai's administration, she has since vocally criticized the Karzai government for failing to significantly advance the social position of women.

As an outsider in Afghanistan's power structure, Jalal has stressed her independence from the warlords and the oppressive regimes of the past. Although many presidential candidates called for a boycott of the 2004 election following reports of voting irregularities at some polling places, Jalal was one of the few candidates who did not join the protest. An exit poll taken during the 2004 election showed that Jalal took about seven percent of the vote among Afghan women.

Jalal received 1.1 percent of the vote in the 2004 election, placing 6th among 17 male candidates. She was a member of the Karzai Administration between 2004 and 2009, serving as the Minister for Women's Affairs in the cabinet.

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