Rahela Sidiqi is the Founder of Rahela Trust and Co-Founder of the Afghan Women Coalition for Change.

Born in 1996 in rural Afghanistan, Rahela has always been passionate about education. She fought to complete her secondary education and in 1986 she successfully graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at Kabul University. In 1988, Rahela married Hashim. Shortly after, they were gifted two sons.

After the Soviets departed Afghanistan, Rahela remembers a period of peace which was promptly shattered by the breakout of war between the Mujahidin fractions, causing Kabul to morph into a battlefield. In 1993, Rahela and her young family moved to a small city in the north, Sharif, to take refuge. It is here Rahela took a role with Oxfam to help others like herself who had fled north. Since then, she has worked in women’s rights and established herself as an activist at the grassroot and policy level.

Following her time with Oxfam, Rahela became Program Officer for women at the UNHCR. In 1995 she was invited to join UN Habitat to facilitate a rehabilitation project in urban areas which aimed to engage women. During this post, Rahela and the team developed a consultation process which led to the development of the ‘Community Forums’ strategy. It became a key means by which people could gain access to resources to rebuild their neighbourhoods and form systems of local governance. 

The success and popularity of the Community Forums became a threat to Taliban rule, and Rahela’s involvement meant her family became a target. After receiving numerous threats Rahela was forced to stop working. In 1998, Rahela’s home was attacked and her husband nearly died. She and her family fled to Pakistan, but after five months, Rahela felt compelled to return to Afghanistan to continue her work. Now the mother of three, Rahela decided to leave her two oldest children in the safe care of her sister who’s home was in Pakistan. Her youngest son was too young to be left, and so travelled with her on training missions into Afghanistan, crossing frontlines to support the women and men who were starting fledgling programmes in Bamyan and Panjshir, this time without international support.

Following the tragedy of 9/11 Afghanistan was invaded by the US, who replaced the brutal Taliban regime with a democratic system. The new Afghan government asked Rahela and her team to design the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) based on their Community Forum strategy. They worked to considerably increase the scale of the program by developing training manuals and operational guides to cover over 20,000 villages across the country.

After successfully handing over management of the NSP to the government, Rahela established an NGO named RASA (Rasa Advocacy & Skill building Agency). This organisation served as a capacity-building support to social organisers so they could implement the NSP and provide training to many of the facilitating partners.

In 2003, Rahela accepted an opportunity to study Rural Development at Reading University in the UK. She gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, in London.

In 2005, with a Masters qualification, Rahela returned with her family to Afghanistan where she felt she could best serve her country. She took a role with the Civil Service Commission. From 2006 to 2011 she worked as the Senior Advisor to the Head of the Civil Service Commission of Afghanistan. 

Rahela’s work involved fighting against corrupt elements in the government and improving women’s rights in rural areas, some of which were under Taliban rule. At this time, the security situation in the country was deteriorating and Rahela suffered constant threats to her and her family’s lives. Following a near-fatal abduction attempt on one of her eldest sons, Rahela was forced to make the difficult decision to seek asylum in the UK. Leaving Afghanistan after all she had invested was devastating. Adjusting to refugee life was a painful challenge for the whole family, but at least now they were safe.

In the UK, with the help of some incredible people and dearest friends, Rahela found a way to continue her work in Afghanistan. 

In 2015, she founded Rahela Trust for Afghan Women’s Education. It has moved from strength to strength since then and continues to reach new ground.

In 2019, Rahela founded the Governance and Reform Advisory (GRA) with the aim to enhance performance in public and private sectors by ensuring good governance, accountability, transparency, and trust. She believes this is what leads to improvements in living standards. Rahela is passionate that more attention should be paid to process rather than structure; it is important to assess how governance really operates, and not merely how it’s described on paper. Until August 2021, Rahela and the GRA were working closely with the Afghan Ministries of Women’s Affairs and Foreign Affairs, to advise and provide capacity building programs and MA and PhD scholarships to the Department of Transboundary Water and Border Affairs. All this stopped with the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Sunday 15th August 2021.

Rahela’s key message is to work in solidarity – to save the women and children of Afghanistan who are at the greatest risk today, and who desperately need immediate attention. 

“Never let your fear prevent you from what you believe is RIGHT”.

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Rahela has been governance and reforms advisor at senior levels for both government and international organisations. Here she has helped to develop strategic policies, implement plans, activate administrative reforms, capacity build and establish grassroot movements for UN-Habitat, CIESVE, DFID, USAID, UNHCR and Oxfam, and Civil Service Commissions. As well as 47 ministerial agencies and several NGOs in the private sector. 

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