Sima Samar (; born 3 February 1957) is an Afghan woman and human rights advocate, activist and social worker within national and international forums, who served as Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to 2003. She is the former Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and, from 2005 to 2009, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan. In 2011, she was part of the newly founded Truth and Justice party. In 2012, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world." Early life and education Samar was born on 3 February 1957 in Jaghori, in the Ghazni Province of Afghanistan. She belongs to the ethnic Hazara. She obtained her degree in medicine in February 1982 at Kabul University. She practiced medicine at a government hospital in Kabul, but after a few months was forced to flee for her safety to her native Jaghori, where she provided medical treatment to patients throughout the remote areas of central Afghanistan. She is currently the head of the human rights commission in Afghanistan. Career In 1984, the government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan arrested her husband, and Samar and her young son fled to neighboring Pakistan. She then worked as a doctor at the refugee branch of the Mission Hospital. Distressed by the total lack of healthcare facilities for Afghan refugee women, she established in 1989 the Shuhada Organization and Shuhada Clinic in Quetta, Pakistan. The Shuhada Organization was dedicated to the provision of health care to Afghan women and girls, training of medical staff and education. In the following years, further branches of the clinic/hospital were opened throughout Afghanistan. Political career After living as a refugee for over a decade, Samar returned to Afghanistan in 2002 to assume a cabinet post in the Afghan Transitional Administration led by Hamid Karzai. In the interim government, she served as Deputy President and then as Minister for Women's Affairs. She was the 6th woman to become Cabinet Minister in Afghanistan, the first Minister for Women's Affairs since Shafiqa Ziaie in the 1970s, and the first woman to become minister since 1992. She was forced into resignation from her post after she was threatened with death and harassed for questioning conservative