Founder's biography:

NOORISTANI, Mohammad Afzal Shurmach

Afghan National, born in 1974, Mohammad Afzal Shurmach Nooristani is an Attorney at Law, recently worked as Founding Executive Director of the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan (LAOA). LAOA as a non-profit, independent, domestically registered NGO was founded by Mr. Nooristani and Ms. Mahbooba Saljuqi in 2006 which aimed to provide nationals with legal aid services in the areas of criminal defense and family law, focusing most of its efforts in representing the marginalized, indigent and under-represented populations specially women and children.
Today, apart from the administrative staff, LAOA counts over 70 lawyers and paralegals, who not only have acquired the skills to represent individuals in courts, but are also diffusing their knowledge and skills through advocacy and paralegal training sessions in Kabul and throughout twenty five provinces of Afghanistan. 

In addition, Mr. Nooristani also served the government of Afghanistan as Director of Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate in the Office of Administrative Affairs and Council of Ministers’ Secretariat (OAA). OAA is providing support to the President to execute his powers over the three pillars of the state.

For the first time, two new training programs “Advocacy Skills Training Program (ASTP) and Paralegal Training Program (PTP)” were designed, written and initiated by Mr. Nooristani and successfully introduced to the Afghan legal community during his tenure as director of LAOA. Mr. Nooristani has strong experience in advocacy and legal training in Afghanistan and as trainer, participated in several legal training initiatives.

From 2006 till 2011, LAOA has represented more than ten thousand criminal and family cases in courts under Nooristani’s supervisions and instructions. He, among other high profile cases, successfully represented the case of Mr. Parwiz Kambakhsh who was accused of blasphemy facing death penalty.

Mr. Nooristani has played major role in founding and establishment of Afghan Independent Bar Association (AIBA), (HAMI) Legal Weekly News Paper, Organization for Strategic Studies and Research (OSSR) and ONE tv Media (1tv).

During his tenure as director of LAOA, Mr. Nooristani has actively participated in many national and international conferences, forums, seminars and workshops representing the civil society of Afghanistan. Among others were:  Rome Conference on the Rule of Law in Afghanistan (Rome 2007), International Forum on Freedom of Expression (Oslo 2009), Peace Loya Jirga (Grand Council) Kabul  (2010) etc.

Mr. Nooristani has successfully graduated from the Prosecution and Judicial Department of the Law and Political Sciences Faculty of the Kabul University and has participated in several technical legal training programs in Afghanistan and abroad. His native language is Dari (Persian) and he has an excellent knowledge of Pashto, English, Norsk, Urdu and Hindi.