Suraya Dalil

Dalil was born in Kabul in February 1970. Her father was a teacher and encouraged her education despite it being unusual at the time.[1] She attended the Zarghona High School and graduated from Kabul Medical University in 1991.[2][3] Her family then moved to Mazar-i-Sharif after her father was injured during the civil war.[3][1][4]

In 2004, Dalil was awarded a Presidential Scholarship to attend the Harvard School of Public Health[5] and graduated with a master's degree in public health in 2005.[2][3][4]

Dalil worked with Médecins Sans Frontières providing health care to Tajik refugees in northern Afghanistan in 1992 and 1993.[2] She then worked with the International Organization for Migration providing medical assistance to Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran.[2][3][1]

Dalil began working with UNICEF in Afghanistan in 1994,[2] overseeing a large scale measles and polio immunization project.[4] When the Taliban reached Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, she fled on foot with her family to Pakistan, where she resumed working for the UNICEF Afghanistan office which had been relocated there.[3] After the fall of the Taliban, she returned to Kabul in 2002 with her family.[3] She worked there until 2007, when UNICEF appointed her Chief of Health and Nutrition Program in Somalia, where she worked until December 2009.[2]

In January 2010, Dalil was assigned as Acting Minister of Public Health by President Hamid Karzai, and she was appointed Minister in March 2012.[2][6] She initiated various strategies to reduce child and maternal mortality rates.[7][8][9]

In November 2015, President Ashraf Ghani appointed Dalil as Permanent Representative of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations in Geneva,[6][10] the first woman in the position.[1]

At the end of 2017, Dalil was named President[11] of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention (Ottawa Treaty), which bans the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines. Afghanistan is one of the countries most affected by these weapons.[12][13] Her presidency of the Convention ends at the end of 2018.[14]

• International Gender Champions (IGC), Member[15]

In 2012, Dalil was awarded a prize by the Vaccination World Union for her achievements in implementing country-wide vaccination.[16] In 2014, she accepted a Resolve Award Special Mention from the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health recognising Afghanistan's efforts to prioritise reproductive, maternal and child health.[17]

• Dalil, Suraya (2000). "Psychosocial assessment of children exposed to war-related violence in Kabul". Violence and Health: Proceedings of a WHO Global Symposiurn: 174–1.
• Dalil, Suraya; UNICEF (2002). Assessment of services and human resource needs for the development of the safe motherhood initiative in Afghanistan. Afghan Digital Libraries.
• Bartlett, L.; Mawji, S.; Whitehead, S.; Crouse, C.; Dalil, S. (2005). "Where giving birth is a forecast of death: maternal mortality in four districts of Afghanistan, 1999–2002". The Lancet. 365 (9462): 864–870. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)71044-8. PMID 15752530. S2CID 581020.
• Dalil, Suraya; et al. (2014). "Aid effectiveness in rebuilding the Afghan health system: a reflection". Global Public Health. 9.sup1 (Suppl 1): S124–S136. doi:10.1080/17441692.2014.918162. PMC 4136664. PMID 24922192.
• Dalil, Suraya (2015). "Security for Our Shared Home". In Julio Frenk; Steven Hoffman (eds.). To Save Humanity:What Matters Most for a Healthy Future. Oxford University Press. pp. 97–98. ISBN 9780190221553.

Dalil's native language is Uzbeki, and she also speaks Dari, Pashto, and English.[2] Her husband is also a medical doctor, and they have three children.[6][1]

• Embassy biography Archived 30 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
• Suraya Dalil (29 November 2017). "Afghanistan: Reflections on My Journey". Voices in Leadership. Harvard (T. H. Chan School of Public Health).