Wali, Sima

found: Washington post WWW site, viewed Oct. 13, 2017(Sima Wali, who fled her native Afghanistan before the 1979 Soviet invasion and devoted the rest of her life to aiding the women who remained behind through years of war, deprivation and Taliban oppression, died Sept. 22 [2017] at her home in Falls Church, Va; she was 66; as leader of the Washington-based nonprofit organization Refugee Women in Development, Ms. Wali became one of the most visible activists for the rights of Afghan women; spoke before the United Nations and U.S. officials, played a critical role in the formation of the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs after the fall of the Islamist Taliban regime in 2001, and helped direct international funding to the country's women, children and refugees; Tom Lantos once lauded her for "pioneering culturally specific approaches in assisting refugee women to resist trauma and violence"; born April 7, 1951, in Kandahar; settled in Washington, where she received a master's degree in international relations from American University in 1984)