23 June 2021
News
HERAT CITY, Afghanistan – Mastura Zia, a 27-year-old midwife in Herat, does not mince words when describing the hardships of the global pandemic: “2020 was the hardest year of my life,” she said.
Ms. Zia is a frontline... Read more
26 April 2021
News
HERAT, Afghanistan – Sahar*, 22, and Abdul Baseer*, 28, in Guzara District of Afghanistan’s Herat Province, did not choose to marry one another. Instead, the decision was made by their parents, as is typical in much of... Read more
13 April 2021
News
KABUL, Afghanistan – When Nabila, 23, fell in love with the young man next door, their romance was destined to be complicated. Nabila’s hand in marriage was already promised to her cousin, a common practice in their... Read more
10 March 2021
News
CHISHTI SHARIF, Herat province, Afghanistan – At 14, she was married. By her 15th birthday, she had borne her first child. But Amina Mansoory’s story does not end in the way all too common with early marriage and... Read more
8 December 2020
News
BAMYAN, Afghanistan – “My life has been hard. I have suffered for a long time,” said Khadija, a woman from Bamyan in central Afghanistan. “My husband told me frequently, ‘You’re not able to give me a son’,” she recalled... Read more
21 October 2020
News
SHAHRISTAN, Afghanistan – “It was midnight on 6 August when there was a loud knocking at my front door. My husband answered. Standing in the dark was a person asking for my help – a baby was being born,” Shirin... Read more
5 October 2020
News
HERAT, Afghanistan – Mahgul* vividly remembers the day she was engaged to be married. “My mother helped me into my new pink dress. She accompanied me to a room where four or five women had gathered. Some of them called... Read more
14 September 2020
News
KABUL, Afghanistan – “When I returned home from work, I had to isolate myself,” described Suhaila Sadat, a midwife at the Malalai Maternity Hospital in Afghanistan. “My parents were worried about me because I interact... Read more
3 September 2020
News
BADAKHSHAN, Afghanistan – It has been a harrowing year for women and girls in Afghanistan. In the first quarter of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was just reaching Afghanistan, flash floods were causing mass... Read more
27 August 2019
News
NANGARHAR, Afghanistan – Raihana Bibi is a 30-year-old mother of four children – one boy and three girls. Their family returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and settled in Nangarhar Province about two years ago. They... Read more