Zarqa Yaftali lived through the first Taliban takeover of Afghanistan 28 years ago, learning in secret and eventually graduating university. Today she’s making sure girls living under gender apartheid in Afghanistan can access education alongside psychological and social support.
Growing up in war and inspired by parents who were school principals, Zarqa Yaftali wanted to make life better for women and girls in Afghanistan from a young age. She was 13 years old when the Taliban first took over Afghanistan in 1996 and banned girls’ education.
Zarqa spent her teenage years secretly studying at home where her mother, a girls’ secondary school principal, had established an underground school. She remembers girls studying in their home from early morning to evening. She also remembers feeling hopeless and dreaming that one day, the Taliban would leave and schools would reopen for girls.
In 2001, that day came and the Taliban fell. Zarqa passed the necessary exams to complete secondary school and was able to start university in 2003. At Kabul University, she experienced an open learning environment and gender equality. She wants girls today to have the same opportunities she had as a young woman in Afghanistan — to pursue her education and choose her own future.
After graduating from university, she began her career as a researcher for the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation (WCLRF). Zarqa’s work with WCLRF helped shape laws that protect women and children from sexual harassment and child marriage, earning her a peace prize from the U.N. As a Malala Fund Education Champion, her research identified the social issues that force girls out of secondary school. Based on the findings from schools across six provinces, WCLRF worked with the former government of Afghanistan and international community to develop a national action plan to improve girls’ graduation rates.
When the Taliban once again took over Afghanistan in 2021, Zarqa’s career of defending women and girls’ rights put her and her family’s safety at risk. Shortly after the Taliban’s takeover, Malala Fund helped evacuate and resettle 266 girls’ education activists and human rights defenders from Afghanistan, including Zarqa and her family.
After resettling in Canada, Zarqa established the Women and Children Research and Advocacy Network (WCRAN) to continue her efforts defending women’s rights. The organisation is now providing mental health support and online education to hundreds of girls and young women impacted by the current ban on girls’ secondary education. It is facilitating group sessions led by a psychologist to help girls manage stress and address depression and anxiety.
Zarqa also joined and facilitated a group of women from Afghanistan working to codify gender apartheid in international law. Since leaving Afghanistan, she has focused on building networks of women’s organisations in and outside of the country and drawing international allies to their cause. Her hope is that codifying gender apartheid will give victims and survivors a legal route to hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes and the international community more power to support women and girls living through it.
Through WCRAN, Zarqa is also continuing her advocacy and lobbying, research, awareness-raising and capacity-building of women’s organisations inside Afghanistan. While Afghanistan has entered a dark period that Zarqa and millions of other women had hoped to never experience again, she continues to fight for women and girls because she wants them to live without fear and have access to all of their rights, including their right to learn.
