When the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan, in September 1996, they issued an edict restricting the movement of women outside their homes. The World Food Programme (WFP), like other aid agencies, found its operations seriously impaired. The edict appeared to preclude both the work of women employees and projects attempting to aid women.

But Nasiba Ghulam Nabi found a way.

At the age of 25, she had been a departmental head in the Afghan civil service. Four years later, she held a key post with WFP, working with its projects for women.

The immediate effect of the edict was to close down those projects, which included bakeries that produced naan bread, a staple of the Afghan diet, at subsidized prices. The proceeds were reinvested in programmes to train the handicapped, war widows and single heads of households and in other community projects.

Nasiba Ghulam Nabi put on the "burka", a head-to-toe gown with mesh across the face that was declared mandatory for women, and moved out of the WFP offices. But she did not stop working. She helped WFP negotiate an agreement with Taliban officials to allow women's projects that were staffed and run entirely by women to continue operating, and she continued to coordinate the projects.

In a special award presented to Nasiba in Rome to mark the International Women's Day, WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini commended her "for her persevering work with women ... undertaken against a background of restrictions in social conduct and mobility for women, and at a time when no other women from aid agencies were continuing to work in public".

Other winners of the 1997 WFP Awards for Improving The Lives of Women were: Khalida Malik, Assistant Programme Officer in Pakistan, "for her pioneering work to provide new opportunities and benefits for women through projects concerned with natural resource rehabilitation"; and the 27 members of the Southern Sudan Team, "in recognition of their drive to enlist the help of local women, through relief committees, in the emergency food operation in Southern Sudan".