Born and educated in Afghanistan, Sharifa Akhlas now works in exile as a radio and television producer and reporter for the Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC), headquartered in Peshawar, Pakistan.
In 1999, Akhlas won the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award.
In the early 1990s, Akhlas, witnessing the status of women deteriorating because of hostilities in Afghanistan, began writing stories on human rights issues. When the Taliban began instituting bans on working women in Afghanistan, Akhlas continued to work but in secret for the AMRC. She elected to work with AMRC to ensure that her writings on humans rights would reach an international audience.
To avoid discovery by the Taliban, Akhlas and her family were forced to move frequently. Nonetheless, her reporting was discovered more than once, most recently in 1998 and she was subsequently arrested and beaten. Her family was also effected–her husband and father both had to promise to keep her quiet or face the same treatment themselves.
Although she escaped to Pakistan with her family, she still moves around to avoid detection. In her current work with the AMRC, Akhlas travels back into Afghanistan, to interview women and bring news to the international community. Despite being captured and arrested by the Taliban again in 2001, Akhlas returned to Pakistan where she continues to work.
Shahla Sherkat is the founder and sole owner of Zanan, an Iranian magazine that concentrates on women’s issues . She felt mainstream journalism was ignoring serious coverage of women’s rights in Iran and Zanan became the first independent journal–and one of the most successful–to focus on women’s issues after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. She is a winner of the 2005 International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award and the 2005 Louis Lyons Award from The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Sherkat has worked as a journalist for 26 years and continues to publish Zanan despite the political climate where the government tightly controlled publications.
Zanan consistently and provocatively covers women’s issues, like articles on divorce laws, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, domestic abuse, and maternal custody issues. In 1998, investigated the rising amount of HIV/AIDS victims in Iran, critiquing the government’s laissez-faire attitude toward the disease. Another story, published in 2003, covered the controversial topic of prostitution in Iran. A 2004 story touched upon gender discrimination within Iranian universities.
Sherkat and Zanan have faced their own dose of adversity over the years. Zanan’s offices were attacked by fundamentalist gangs during the early and mid-1990s. Authorities have threatened Sherkat and her writers with imprisonment. Since she is the editorial director, Sherkat is liable for the content of the magazine and has been called to Iran’s Press Court to defend specific articles, including an article by 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and a controversial series of articles about Islamic law and women that were written by Mehrangiz Kar, women’s rights lawyer, and Mohsen Saidzadeh, Islamic cleric.
Despite the adversity, Sherkat continues to publish and the charges brought against her for publishing the aforementioned pieces were eventually dropped.
Sarah Khan, Senior Project Specialist at the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence (API-GBV). Sarah has a longstanding passion for grassroots activism, domestic violence advocacy, and community education and empowerment, with close to 20 years of working in the field. After 9-11,she intentionally chose to work at the intersection of race and gender justice to concretely reduce the vulnerability of immigrants, refugees and other marginalized groups. Her passion is fueled by breaking silos and encouraging herself and others to address intersectionality in their work by addressing root causes of gender-based violence.
Since 2014, she managed all aspects of the Culturally Specific Services Program (CSSP) project, including intensive targeted TA, and conducted site visits and training on cultural competency. Before that, she led it’s economic security program, Building Economic Security Together, a pilot project designed to build the financial capability for survivors of South Asian survivors of domestic violence. As the former Executive Director at Maitri, an agency working with South Asian survivors of violence, she built a volunteer agency with institutionalized financial and other policies and procedures;
While residing in Santa Clara County, she was a Commissioner on the Santa Clara County’s Domestic Violence Council, as the Vice Chair of Administration and the Commissioner of Immigrant Voices, working at the County level on various policies’ that affect survivors of domestic violence. As part of the Immigrant and Survivor Committee, she worked with other committee members on the language access protocols of the different police departments . She has a BA in History (Hons.), an MA in Political Science and an M. Phil in International Relations from New Delhi, India.
Known for- Gender Based Violence
Category- Non-profit and Women Rights
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Sheikha Hessa Saad al-Abdullah Al-Sabah is president of the Council of Arab Businesswomen (CABW). She is a successful entrepreneur with past work at the International Marine Petroleum Company, and within the Ministry of Defense’s Department of Medical Services.
Related to women’s empowerment in the workplace, Al-Sabah serves on several committees: Kuwait Volunteers Women Society, the Kuwait Businesswomen Committee, Arab African Woman Council, and the Women’s Affairs Committee.
In 2001, Haifa Al Kaylani established the Arab International Women’s Forum, which is an umbrella organization that brings together 1,500 associations, individuals, and corporations based in 45 nations. The organization helps Arab women build relationships, exchange ideas, and create an international community.
“We are there to effect positive growth and development, and with it peace and prosperity by focusing on women’s roles in the Arab world and the international community,” she says of the forum’s purpose. “There is no development in any society without women playing their rightful role.”
Born in Palestine and raised in Lebanon, Al Kaylani studied at the American University of Beirut and University of Oxford, UK. She is fluent in five languages.
In 2006, Haifa Al Kaylani received recognition by Women’s eNews in New York as one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.” In 2007 and 2009, Haifa Al Kaylani was named as one of the Muslim Power 100 Leaders in the United Kingdom and received the Education Excellence Award.
Zilka Spahić-Šiljak is a Bosnian academician who specializes in culture, religion, human rights, women’s rights, and Islamic feminism in both the governmental and non-governmental sectors.
She is currently affiliated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies at the University of Sarajevo and is project coordinator for Researches in Gender and Education at the Transcultural and Psychosocial Foundation, where her team has published Gender Equality and Judicial Practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2007), Women, Religion, and Politics: The Impact of Religious Interpretations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on the Status of Women in Public Life and Politics (2007), The Forgotten Female Rulers of the Muslim World (2005), and An In-depth Study on Domestic Violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2006).
Previously, she has taught at Arizona State University and during Spring 2009, she taught a course at the University of Pittsburgh called Women in Religion–Islam, Marriage and Sexual Ethics in Islam.
Winning the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award in 2008, Farida Nekzad has devoted herself to drawing attention to the unfettered rule of the warlords in Afghanistan. Vice president of the South Asia Media Commission and managing editor of the only independent Afghani news outlet, Pajhwok Afghan News, Nekzad has been trying to improve the lot of women and their right to the freedom of speech by expounding upon the discriminatory actions of warlords.
She has worked freelance for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, New York Times, BBC, Voice of America, and Effat, a magazine for women released by a group of Afghan female journalists post-Taliban era.
Despite the turmoil Afghanistan has been facing, Nekzad continues to write about the domestic violence, forced marriages, and discrimination against women’s rights workers that occur under the rule of the warlords.
These warlords have not taken kindly to her writing. She has received death threats and escaped a kidnapping attempt by the expedient of jumping from a moving vehicle.
In the face of this adversity, Nekzad nonetheless persists in her efforts, wishing to be a role model for other Afghan women.
A Bangladeshi journalist, Sumi Khan works as a crime reporter and for her efforts has had to face death threats from various groups including Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the ruling political parties in Bangladesh.
In 1999, while working on the Daily Jugnator in Dhaka, Khan broke a story concerning a high-ranking official raping his maid. Although the story was later picked up by other reporters, she was pushed out of her job.
Undeterred, Khan continued reporting but in 2004, after reporting on politicians and their ties to attacks on minorities and on a local ring of child snatchers Khan was brutally attacked and it was months before she could return to work. Her fingers and hands were specifically targeted and broken. But return she did, in spite of a continuance of threats. She continues to work under these conditions, with a strong refusal to be intimidated by the violence that extremist groups have meted out too journalists in the past.
At the magazine where she works, Weekly 2000, she is the only female news correspondent.
In 2005, she traveled to London to receive the Index/Guardian Hugo Young award for her fearless journalism. She also won the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism award.
