Commissioners
JUDGE SAYED MURAD SHARIFI (CHAIRPERSON)
Following a distinguished academic career which culminated in a degree in the Faculty of Sharia at Kabul University and in judiciary courses in Egypt, Morocco and Italy, Judge Sharifi entered the Afghan judicial system as a member of the Nangarhar City Court. He soon began lecturing in the Faculty of Sharia himself, teaching the Holy Quran Tafsir (interpretation), but went into exile in Pakistan following the Soviet invasion. With the Soviet withdrawal he returned to Afghanistan and to court work and, after serving as general head of three successive provincial Appeal Courts (Baghlan, Nangarhar and Paktia), became Chief of the Judicial Inspectorate of the Supreme Court. Judge Sharifi is widely travelled in Asia, Africa and Europe and has twice undertaken the pilgrimage to Mecca. He was chosen to chair the ECC by his fellow commissioners. more
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR SHAH SULTAN AKIFI
Scientist and administrator, has been the Human Resources Director General of the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House of Parliament) since 2007. Having spent six years at university in the USSR, Akifi returned to Afghanistan with an M.Sc.degree in the mid-1980s. He worked as a journalist and with various Afghan socio-political organisations before becoming a fellow of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan and attaining the rank of Associate Professor. A few years were spent with international organisations before he returned to scientific research, only to be lured away by Human Resources work at Parliament. Akifi has attended a host of training programmes in the fields of science and administration, has travelled widely, has received several honours and has published extensively. more
JUDGE JOHANN KRIEGLER
Johann Kriegler, a lifelong human-rights lawyer and former judge of the South African Constitutional Court, led his country’s first democratic elections in 1994 and the subsequent establishment of a permanent electoral agency. Since then he has been involved in electoral preparation, administration or evaluation in more than a dozen emerging democracies ranging from Timor-Leste (1999) through Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq to Sierra Leone and Liberia and, most recently, Kenya (2008), where he headed a six-month commission of enquiry into that country’s failed presidential and parliamentary elections. He is a member of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Executive Advisory Council. more
MR AHMAD ZIA RAFAT
By reading classical literature and writing poetry while still in his teens, Zia Rafat early showed the direction his life would take as an award-winning poet, writer and cultural activist. In voluntary exile during the Soviet occupation, Rafat was instrumental in the establishment of cultural-activist groupings in Iran and after his return to Afghanistan began producing poetry critical of government. He earned his Master’s degree in Literature from Kabul University and continued his cultural activism, returning to the university to teach in 2002. At the same time he worked in the Ministry of Higher Education. In 2005 he resigned his position in the Ministry and became known as an independent socio-political commentator. He has retained his university post while producing dozens of articles and several books. Rafat is the official spokesperson for the Commission. more
MR SAFWAT SIDQI
Mustafa Safwat Rashid Sidqi, a law graduate of Baghdad University and a member of both the Iraqi Bar Association and the Kurdistan Lawyers Syndicate, has practised as a lawyer for many years in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Suleimaniyah. Co-founder in 1991 of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization and a Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington DC) since 2007, he served as a commissioner of the newly established Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in Baghdad from 2004 to 2007. The IEC oversaw Iraq’s transitional National Assembly elections in January 2005, the referendum on the new Constitution in October 2005 and subsequent National Assembly elections. Having been based in Khartoum for a year as electoral advisor to the National Elections Commission of Sudan, Mr Sidqi assumed his new appointment as an ECC commissioner in May 2010. more
