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UN PhotoGENEVA / AFGHAN REFUGEE JOURNALIST
STORY: GENEVA / AFGHAN REFUGEE JOURNALIST
TRT: 03:11
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CHECK SHOTLIST FOR DETAILS
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ NATS
DATELINE: 20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
PLEASE CREDIT OCHA ON SCREEN – 24, APRIL 2025, KANDAHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
1. Wide shot, Afghan returnees arriving at the reception centre, Takhta Pul reception center.
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“I was living in a village in Bamayan where we didn't have electricity, no running water and, it was actually my first time getting into a car when my family fled to Iran.”
PLEASE CREDIT UNFPA ON SCREEN - 06 MAY 2025, TORKHAM, AFGHANISTAN
3. Med shot, women in children in emergency maternity clinic at the Omari camp reception centre
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“I still remember my mother was taking me from school to school in Iran, asking and begging the principals to let me in their class.”
PLEASE CREDIT OCHA ON SCREEN - 29 APRIL 2025, KANDAHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
5. Med shot, women and children Takhta Pul reception centre
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“I grew up longing for education, for the right to go to school and to be like everybody else in my, you know, in the neighborhood that we were living in.”
PLEASE CREDIT UNFPA ON SCREEN - BAMYAN, AFGHANISTAN, 8 MAY 2025
7. Wide shot, women and children at the centre, family health house
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“There was a huge and severe experiences of racism that I experienced growing up in Iran. I was being called out on the streets, nasty Afghani, go back to your country.”
PLEASE CREDIT UNFPA ON SCREEN - TORKHAM, AFGHANISTAN, 6 MAY 2025
9. Med shot, women and children in front of the emergency maternity clinic at the Omari camp reception centre
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“When the Taliban took over, from that moment on I knew that things have shifted and for me personally, life became into a category of like life before August and after August. And with that comes a lot of trauma and lots of pain and one of those pains is the fact that I see the right to education was denied to millions of women and girls in Afghanistan.”
11. PLEASE CREDIT UNFPA ON SCREEN - TORKHAM, AFGHANISTAN, 6 MAY 2025
12. Med shot, women and children in front of the emergency maternity clinic at the Omari camp reception centre
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“This country has been always a war-torn country. But what I feel people don't understand is what is happening in Afghanistan is about women's rights globally. It brings the bar low of what could be denied to women globally, and there is nothing the world could do or be willing to do to take concrete action to push back on the Taliban.”
29 APRIL 2025, KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN
14. Wide shot of women working at the Salamati Circle, a social enterprise offering vocational training to women with the support of UN Women
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader journalist and activist:
“This is the most severe women's right crisis of our time, and all of us have a responsibility to report it to raise awareness. But also to ensure that we are hearing from the people who are living the Taliban's oppression, living in the Taliban gender apartheid in Afghanistan.”
PLEASE CREDIT OCHA ON SCREEN - 30 APRIL 2025, KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN
16. Med shot, mothers and families at the mobile health center
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader, journalist and activist:
“The biggest problem is the human rights that they have been denied the basic rights to human rights, and what is human rights? In Afghanistan, we are talking about the most, most basic rights, and that is the right to go to school. That is the right to earn your living as a woman, to be able to support your family.”
PLEASE CREDIT OCHA ON SCREEN - 30 APRIL 2025, KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN
18. Close up, families at the mobile health center
20 JUNE 2025, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Zahra Nader, journalist and activist:
“There is an immediate need for action, and we don't see a lot of action. We see a lot of rhetorical condemnation and statements saying: yes the Taliban should reverse it, but when and how? And when there is no action, the Taliban do not respect words. They don't care about words.”
PLEASE CREDIT OCHA ON SCREEN - 23 APRIL 2025, KANDAHAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN
20. Wide shot, Afghan returnees arriving at the reception centre, Takhta Pul reception center
World Refugee Day: The Journey of an Afghan Journalist Forced to Flee Twice
Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, women have faced devastating setbacks. New data from UN Women shows that with so many of their rights denied, Afghan women achieve only 17.3 percent of their full potential in exercising their rights and freedoms.
Zahra Nader, an Afghan journalist and activist, has lived this harsh reality: she has been forced to flee her home country not once, but twice, to escape the Taliban's oppressive rule.
Once a Refugee
Zahra first became a refugee at the age of six. When the Taliban first took power, her family fled their village in Bamayan, where they lived without electricity or running water. She recalls how that journey marked her very first experience riding in a car— to escape to Iran.
But Iran also proved to be harsh: once there, she was denied her right to an education. Her mother went begging school principals to let her be in class, but not one accepted her, as an Afghan girl. She remembers that people in the street would humiliate her by calling out: “Nasty Afghani, go back to your country.”
Twice a Refugee: the Second Exile
After living as a refugee in Iran, Zahra managed to return home to Afghanistan, where she continued her studies and worked as a journalist in Kabul. She later moved to Canada and pursued her PhD. However, when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Zahra was once again faced with the painful reality that she could not go back, as her work as journalist put her at risk. She became a refugee for the second time.
What weighs on her most is the fate of millions of Afghan women and girls who are now denied access to education, as she was. « It is really inhuman, for half of the population of a country to be stripped of their basic human rights because they were born female, they were born women,” Zahra says.
Life Under Gender Apartheid
Zahra describes the Taliban regime as a system of « gender apartheid ». Women are systematically denied access to education, healthcare, freedom of movement, and even basic dignity—conditions that cause immense suffering. “This is the most severe women's rights crisis of our time, and all of us have a responsibility to report it, to raise awareness, but also to ensure that we are hearing from the people who are leaving the Taliban's oppression and living in the Taliban gender apartheid in Afghanistan.”
There are tragic consequences to this system, she says: women facing extreme poverty, preventable deaths during childbirth, and severe mental trauma. One of the most heart-wrenching stories she recalls is that of a 16-year-old girl who took her own life after being imprisoned and, most likely, assaulted.
Silenced Voices and Global Indifference
Despite the severity of the crisis, Zahra says media coverage and global action to counter this repression have been stymied. “In Afghanistan, the media are not allowed to independently publish information. The Taliban have inserted their own monitors there strictly and ensuring that no media would be allowed to publish any content that the Taliban calls contrary to Islam.”
She warns against falling for the Taliban's narrative, which is to claim that they respect women’s rights in accordance to Islamic principles, “yet no other Muslim-majority country practices such oppression,” she says.
Amid the darkness, resistance
”If there is oppression there is resistance - and I know, I see, and I work with a group of courageous women who stand up to the Taliban every day, that report every day, that try to be the voice of women in Afghanistan,” Zahra says in a message. She is thinking of the brave Afghan women who continue to report, learn in secret, and fight back against the erasure of their identities. “The Taliban can lock doors but not minds,” she says.
“The courage of Afghan women and pursuit of knowledge are acts of defiance. This regime will not last, and women must keep preparing for the day when justice and freedom return.”
