It is women who try to bridge differences and create the building blocks of reconciliation

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid

"This doesn't bother me so long as women can go to work and school and be socially active.

"There are no Saudi laws that allow me to drive. Wherever I go I respect the traditions beginning with my own traditions and my own people", she explained.

"I understand the changing context - in all the Gulf areas and in many Muslim countries, no national context is frozen in time".

Mrs Obaid ascribes her success to her parents' enlightened attitude and governmental support, driven by her unswerving commitment to women's human rights.

Importance of education

She believes education is the key to development, benefiting herself from what she describes as the Islamic commitment to learning.

"The first word in the Koran is 'read' and it is an order to every Muslim. The most important beginning in my life was my parents' position on girls' education", she said.

When she was three she went to a madrassa because there was no other girls' school in Saudi then.

At the age of seven, she was sent to boarding school in Cairo until she was 17.

Afghan women must be part of their country's reconstruction

"It was very difficult for my parents to send me away but I never saw it as rejection, I saw it as an act of love", Mrs Obaid said.

She went on to get a doctorate with the first Saudi scholarship for a woman to study in the US.

She has two daughters in England, one a doctor and the other an architect, who were brought up proud to be Arabs and Muslims.

The Saudi Government did not interfere when she joined the UN in 1975, but endorsed her nomination for her present post.

Re-building Afghanistan

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid wants women to be involved at the planning stages of Afghanistan's reconstruction.

"We hope all this investment will bring about not only girls' education but also bring women into the political discussion.

"Women know very well what they want. The men have to recognise the women's dreams and support them."

Mrs Obaid says the UNFPA wants to expand aid to cover "more women, more time and more geography."

"The Afghan clinics and hospitals I visited in 1997 were in a sad shape with little equipment or medication.

"In one women's hospital none of the women workers were paid for a year.

"They had almost no anaesthesia and only gas lamps.

"Women like that need to be recognised as they will be the cornerstone in re-building Afghanistan."