Malalai Joya, a women’s rights activist and former member of Afghanistan’s parliament, will be allowed into the United States to promote her memoir. Joya will speak at the University of New Hampshire in Durham on Tuesday, March 29.  

Joya had planned to spend several weeks in the United States promoting an updated edition of her memoir “A Woman Among Warlords.” But, when she went to the U.S. embassy to collect her travel visa, government officials told her she could not enter the country because she is “unemployed” and “lives underground,” according to a statement from the Afghan Women’s Mission.  She was later granted a visa after missing the first three weeks of her tour.

Joya was elected to Afghanistan’s parliament in 2005 at the age of 27, making her the youngest woman ever elected. She has been an outspoken critic of warlords and fundamentalists in Afghanistan and has been the target of several assassination attempts. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2010. Supporters suspect she was initially denied a visa because of her public opposition to the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan.

The event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on March 29 in Theater I at the Memorial Union Building on the UNH campus in Durham.