I welcome Dr. Soraya Rahim Sobhrang, Commissioner for Women's Rights at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. She is accompanied by Mr. Jim Loughran of Front Line.
Dr. Sobhrang is responsible for the monitoring, protection and promotion of women's rights in Afghanistan. She lives under constant threat from the Taliban and other conservative elements within Afghan society. She trained at the faculty of medicine in Kabul University. She completed training courses in the fields of management, women's rights, gender and psychology in Hamburg, Germany, before returning to Afghanistan to work with the Ministry of Women's Affairs as technical and political deputy Minister. In 1984 she began her work as an adviser for the women's rights protection and development unit of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and in 1985 she was selected as Commissioner for Women's Rights.
Dr. Sobhrang is in Dublin as one of the five nominees for the Front Line human rights defenders award for 2010. I congratulate her on this nomination and wish her well tomorrow in City Hall at 8 a.m. The annual award is given to a human rights defender who, at great personal risk, has made an outstanding contribution to the defence of the rights of others. Those of us who will be in attendance look forward to the result tomorrow.
I wish to inform the witnesses that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, you are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence you are to give this committee. If you are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter and you continue to so do, you are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of your evidence. You are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and you are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, you should not criticise nor make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.
This committee is a sub-committee of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs so it is small in membership. However, the proceedings are being recorded and are being broadcast to the offices of Members. The proceedings are also published in the Official Report.