Halima Karzai joins the Independent Women's Forum as associate director of foreign policy and international women's issues. She is responsible for all international women's issues, with a primary focus on Afghanistan.

Halima works on issues pertaining to women's human rights; human trafficking and violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and refugee and internally displaced women; she is responsible for organizing and developing training programs and conferences for visiting delegations.

An Afghan-American, Halima has worked to increase awareness of democratic values in Afghanistan, primarily focusing on Afghan women's Islamic, constitutional, and international rights. She has worked on a project to provide guideline for international human rights resource material presented to the Iraqi Women's Ministry of Human Rights delegation that was hosted by IWF.

She was a volunteer with the Afghan Embassy in Cairo, where she worked with a delegation of Afghan women judges who were in Egypt for Islamic legal training from the notable Al-Azhar University. She has lived in Egypt, and has traveled through the Middle East, Europe, and Afghanistan.

Halima graduated from the University of Maryland, where she studied government and politics with a focus on international relations.  She also studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo. She is fluent in Pashto, Dari/Farsi, Spanish, and Arabic.