Dr Noor Ahmad Khalidi
Noor Ahmad Khalidi was born in January 1950 in Afghanistan. He has completed his primary education at Said Jamaluddin Afghan school in Kabul and subsequently graduated in 1967 from the famous Hibibia High School in Kabul. Khalidi received his BA Degree in National Economics from the Kabul University and, as an outstanding graduate, his degree was conferred to him by the then Prime Minister Mr Mohammad Musa Shafiq in 1972. He completed his Masters Degree in Population Sciences from the International Institute for Population Science in Bombay India and subsequently completed received in 1990 his PhD Degree in Demography from prestigious the Australian National University. From 1973 to 1985, for 12 years, Dr Khalidi worked at various posts with the Government of Afghanistan at the Ministry of Planning, then the Central Statistics Organisation and the Ministry of Public Health. He was also working part-time with the UNICEF Office in Kabul. During his tenure with the government of Afghanistan, Dr Noor Khalidi drafted several keynote speeches for high-ranking government officials attending major domestic and international conferences. Among them, he drafted the Seven Year Economic Development Plan section of the then President Mohammad Daoud speech at the 1977 Loya Jirgah or Grand National Assembly. Similarly, he drafted the speeches delivered at the Third Population Conference for Asia and Pacific in 1982 in Sri Lanka and the United Nations International Conference on Population, Mexico 1984. From 1989 to 2014 Dr Khalidi worked for 25 years with the Australian Federal Government in Canberra as well as the State Governments of New South Wales in Sydney and The Government of Queensland in Brisbane. Among the posts he held, his assignment as a Senior Advisor at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra is noticeable. He also worked as Population Specialist with the South Pacific Commission based in Noumea New Caledonia, advising the South Pacific Island countries on matters related to population and development. After retirement from the government, Dr Khalidi works as a freelance consultant in the field of demography, population and households through KRD Social Consulting whose customers are government agencies in the filed of community, families and public housing providers. Over the last 20 years, Dr Khalidi prepared nine major publications on subjects of youth, as well as population and household projections for many government and community agencies in Australia of which 6 of such works have been published for public use by these agencies and are available at the National Library of Australia and other libraries. Similarly, Dr Khalidi has published numerous articles in Australia, Afghanistan and elsewhere on a variety of subjects. He has 61 articles on the “Afghan-German Online” website as well as 85 articles on the “Ariana Afghanistan Online” website. He also has a number of articles in English and Dari on the academic website of the “Academia”. His article entitled “The Ethnic Composition of Population of Afghanistan” has been downloaded many hundred times by people in many countries around the world. Dr Khalidi has a published fiction book entitled “the Avalanche” which is based on the September 11 events in the US and its impact on Afghanistan. He recently published a book entitled “Afghanistan: People, History & Politics” in Dari language. Upon request by the Herat University, Dr Khalidi delivered a three-month concise course on “The Contemporary History of Afghanistan” for the University Students via weekly Lessons using Skype. Dr Khalidi is married and lives with his family in Brisbane, Australia.
