Women For Afghan Women

Afghan Women Rising

Blog

An Inspiring Lunch with Malala Yousufzai

by

Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of attending a small luncheon where the special guests were Malala Yousufzai and her father Ziauddin Yousufzai. I have admired them both ever since the attack Malala suffered at the hands of the Taliban, and it is my great fortune that I met them not at a huge event but at an intimate luncheon where I could speak with them at leisure. This encounter with Malala and Ziauddin confirmed something that I had always suspected -- that the struggles of Afghans and Pakistanis are very closely connected, if not one and the same. …

[Read more...] about An Inspiring Lunch with Malala Yousufzai

The Hope In Afghanistan

by

News of the horrific and inhumane murder of Farkhunda left many westerners wondering whether Afghanistan, a country with a history of gruesome violence against women, has really changed. The brutal beating and burning of an innocent woman for allegedly having burned a page of the Quran is reminiscent of a society infamous, under Taliban rule, for commodifying, controlling, brutalizing and murdering women for the sake of family honor. But a recent trip to Afghanistan with Women for Afghan Women (WAW), a 14 year old non-profit organization dedicated to securing and protecting the rights of disenfranchised Afghan women and girls, painted a different, more positive image of what is happening in Afghanistan right now; one from which even US voters could learn something (given that the Afghan parliament is 27% female, whereas less than 20% of congress is female). …

[Read more...] about The Hope In Afghanistan