Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini
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About Khaled
Khaled Hosseini – an Afghan-American author and humanitarian - was announced as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in 2006 and has since demonstrated exceptional commitment to working on behalf of the millions of people around the world forced to flee their homes.
Khaled knows first-hand what it’s like to be a refugee. He was a teenager living in Paris, where his father worked as a diplomat when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. His family were forced to seek asylum in the United States.
As one of UNHCR's most long-standing goodwill ambassadors, Khaled has travelled extensively with UNHCR on field visits to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Italy, Uganda, Jordan, Chad, and Iraq.
Khaled's support regularly extends to major UNHCR campaign moments, including World Refugee Day, the iBelong campaign to end statelessness, and the Nansen Refugee Award. He is equally committed to supporting UNHCR's fundraising efforts with the general public and private sector partners, including via his own Khaled Hosseini Foundation.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini with South Sudanese refugee and entrepreneur, Jacob, at the market in Nyumanzi refugee settlement.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini visits Syrian refugees in Azraq Camp in Jordan.
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Recent advocacy and campaigning
As part of the UNHCR X UNIQLO collaboration, Khaled designed a “Peace for All" t-shirt, launched in UNIQLO stores and online in spring 2024, with proceeds benefiting UNHCR’s work.
Khaled has also supported UNHCR’s fundraising objectives through various email appeals, including UNHCR’s Winter campaign in December 2023, where he encouraged donations to help support refugees during harsher winter conditions. In January 2023, he supported USA for UNHCR’s new community engagement initiative, ‘Culture Collective’, which showcases excellent films, books, music, and other forms of art and culture by refugees and about refugees’ experiences. Khaled featured his award-winning novel The Kite Runner to help draw attention to the ongoing displacement crisis in Afghanistan and encourage empathy for Afghan families whose lives have been upturned by violence and conflict.
Khaled has also leveraged his writing skills to support UNHCR’s work to raise awareness, most notably when he authored Sea Prayer (see details below).
Support for Afghanistan
Khaled has consistently remained one of our most active ambassadors on the Afghanistan emergency, drawing on his personal history of displacement from the country to raise awareness and build empathy. Khaled visited Afghanistan in 2007, where he saw first-hand one of the UN’s largest and most protracted operations, meeting repatriated refugee families in the northern provinces of Kunduz, Baghlan, Balkh, Parwan and Kabul. Upon his return to the United States, he established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, which partners with UNHCR and raises funds to build homes for thousands of refugee returnees.
The resurgence of violence in 2021 motivated a new public wave of support for UNHCR’s Afghanistan emergency appeal. Khaled recorded digi-ads to help fundraise and participated in media interviews with the New York Times and BBC World Service. Khaled used his high-profile platform to bring awareness to the rising violence and insecurity during the fall of Kabul and to help UNHCR in its efforts to support those displaced as a result.
Khaled also utilises his high-profile social media presence, particularly on X, to draw attention to the lived experiences of Afghan refugees. More recently, Khaled shared content highlighting the devastating impact of the earthquakes in Afghanistan in October 2023.
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Past highlights of Khaled’s UNHCR support
Sea Prayer, a tribute to the thousands of refugees who have perished at sea
In 2018, Khaled travelled to Lebanon and Italy, where he met with families splintered apart by one or more members, making the heart-wrenching decision to take the desperate sea journey to Europe. In Sicily, Khaled met individuals who had survived the sea crossing and visited the graves of those lost at sea, trying to reach safety.
Khaled was deeply moved by the stories he heard, prompting him to publish a short, illustrated story, Sea Prayer, in 2018. Sea Prayer was inspired by the story of 3-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on 2 September 2015 while trying to reach safety in Europe. Khaled dedicated the story to the thousands of refugees who have perished at sea, fleeing war and persecution. It has been published in over 30 languages, with illustrations by Dan Williams, and was initially released to coincide with UNHCR’s Desperate Journeys report.
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Although published six years ago, Khaled’s powerful words still ring true today:
"As the drownings in the Mediterranean Sea sadly continue, I hope that Sea Prayer helps keep alive the memory of Alan Kurdi, and that it serves as a reminder of the unfathomable desperation that forces families to risk all they have in search of hope and safety on another shore, across the waters. We all have an individual duty to let our friends, our families, our communities, our governments know we support refugees, that we want to see the expansion of safe, legal pathways for those in need of international protection, and when, if they should reach our own doorstep in search of safety and sanctuary that we welcome them. We can show solidarity #WithRefugees in so many different ways. Please take action today."
Khaled's work as a Goodwill Ambassador
News and highlights
Find the latest news and key highlights about Khaled's work as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador.
Pakistan has generously hosted Afghan refugees for decades. But as winter nears, thousands of Afghan families are being deported to face an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding since 2021. https://t.co/RYzDLKl5SL
— Khaled Hosseini (@khaledhosseini) November 27, 2023