Feminist Afghan Media: Afghanistan Women’s News Agency (AWNA), Nimrokh Media, Rukhshana Media, Radio Begum, Begum TV, and Zan Times

Afghanistan is facing an extreme human-rights emergency, with Taliban policies shutting girls out of secondary and university education and denying 2.2 million girls schooling beyond the primary level. Women are barred from most work, public life, and basic freedoms, while forced and child marriage has surged. In this crisis, feminist media outlets—AWNA, Nimrokh, Rukhshana, Radio Begum, Begum TV, and Zan Times—have emerged in Afghanistan and in exile, documenting abuses and defending women’s voices despite escalating repression.

Afghanistan represents one of the most significant human rights crises in the world today, disproportionately impacting Afghan women. The Taliban have barred girls from secondary school, making Afghanistan the only country to impose a nationwide ban on girls’ secondary education. This was extended in 2022 to university education. UNESCO and UNICEF estimate that about 2.2 million girls are denied schooling beyond the primary level. The United Nations and human-rights bodies have characterized these measures as contributing to an emerging category of gender apartheid and to the crime against humanity of persecution based on gender.

In addition, women have been banned from most government jobs and from large parts of the private sector. The Taliban have barred Afghan women from working for most national and international NGOs and for UN agencies in Afghanistan, and have excluded them from many public spaces. They have imposed strict movement and dress controls.

There has been a surge in marrying off daughters under conditions of forced and child marriage. Many families fear that their daughters could be forced to marry Taliban members and see early marriage as a preventative measure. There is significant gender-based violence and violation of bodily integrity, with almost no access to legal protection or remedy.

Several women-focused, often explicitly feminist, media outlets emerged in the midst of this: starting around 2015/2016 with the Afghanistan Women’s News Agency (AWNA), then followed by Nimrokh Media, Rukhshana Media, Radio Begum, Begum TV, and Zan Times.

AWNA was founded in 2015/2016 as a women-focused news agency and multimedia platform with its original base in Herat, Afghanistan, and is now partly operating in exile. It was founded by Faisal Karimi, an Afghan journalist and former professor at Herat University, who also founded the Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies and Kaashi Media. The primary languages of AWNA are Dari/Persian. It focuses on gender-based violence, media freedom, and women’s rights and political participation.

Nimrokh Media was founded in 2017 in Kabul as a weekly print magazine and is now primarily digital. It was founded by Fatima Roshanian, an Afghan political science and journalism graduate who has conducted field research across multiple provinces in Afghanistan. Its primary language is Dari, with some content in English. Nimrokh focuses on gender equality, taboo topics, and women’s political participation.

Rukhshana Media was founded in late 2020 in Afghanistan and now has its editorial base in London. It was founded by Zahra Joya, a Hazara journalist who attended school disguised as a boy during the first Taliban regime. She trained in law, then switched to journalism, and used her personal savings as the launch funding for Rukhshana, named in memory of a woman stoned to death in 2015. Its primary languages are Dari and English. Rukhshana focuses on domestic and sexual violence, reproductive health, forced and child marriage, and the bans on women’s education and work.

Radio Begum and Begum TV were founded on 8 March 2021 and 8 March 2024, respectively. They are a women-focused radio station and satellite TV channel under the Begum Organization for Women. Radio Begum began in Kabul, while Begum TV is based in Paris. They were founded by Hamida Aman, an Afghan-Swiss journalist and media entrepreneur. She left Afghanistan as a child and grew up in Switzerland. She returned after 2001 to work in media development, founded Awaz, a production company, and later the Begum Organization for Women to defend women’s rights. Their areas of focus include women’s education, access to information, and women’s public voices under gender apartheid.

Zan Times was founded in 2022 in Canada with a dispersed team in exile and inside Afghanistan. Zahra Nader, an Afghan-Canadian Hazara journalist, founded it. She began working as a reporter in Kabul, worked with the New York Times bureau, and moved to Canada for graduate studies in gender and women’s studies. She founded Zan Times in response to the Taliban’s return to power. Its primary languages are English and Dari/Persian. Areas of focus include women, LGBTQI+ communities, environmental harm, and structural abuses committed by the Taliban.

Where these will develop, or who will found the next Afghan feminist media outlet?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.