A salute from far away, greetings to all!
Thank you so much for inviting me to give this keynote speech. I would have loved to travel to Finland to meet you face to face but after a lot of effort, I couldn’t get a visa from Finnish embassy. However, I am extremely happy and honored that I can deliver my speech through this video.
I know that this speech might be a security risk for me. The Taliban is willing to arrest, torture, and kill anybody who criticizes them or co-operates with westerners. I am taking this risk because I want the voices of us, the young people of Afghanistan, to be heard and our stories to be told. I’m extremely grateful that today, you are listening to me.
As a young girl growing up in Kabul, I dreamed of becoming the first female president of Afghanistan. My generation grew up in a relatively democratic society that was yet violent and unequal. I lost some of my friends when the extremists attacked the girls’ schools and universities and killed the students and when car bombs exploded in the neighborhoods where Hazara people live.
However, us, the young people who grew up between the two Taliban regimes, believed that we could contribute to building a more democratic and equal society. We worked hard to make Afghanistan a better country for everyone.
I remember the day in 2021 when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. I was at home, and it was around 10 am. Despite my pleas, my parents didn’t let me go to university. One of my university classmates, who was my close friend, called me. Hey, the Taliban came inside Kabul. Where are you? Did you go to university today? I just said no, nothing more. I couldn’t say it was unbelievable for me. That day started a horror movie in my life.
Today, being a young woman in Afghanistan means that you can be arrested, beaten up, or sexually violated for speaking out, for wearing your hijab in the wrong way, for walking without a male escort – or for just being a woman. We are not allowed to study, work, choose our clothes, listen to music, play sports, earn our living, and travel longer distances without male escort – only because we are women.
In this speech, I am going to reflect on what should be done to make sure that young people in Afghanistan could experience the world as just and fair. Who should do it, and how could it be done?
My experiences as a young Afghan woman is the opposite of the conference theme. I grew up as a young person who wanted to do everything in her power to make her environment fair and just. But when the Taliban took over and threw us into darkness, we, the women of my generation, were abandoned by the world.
When I grew up, I had a dream that one day, every girl in Afghanistan would be seen as human beings, not as something bad or dirty. I had a dream that one day, every Afghan girl could be free to walk, speak, study, work, participate – and love. The reason behind my dreams was that I saw the results of gender and ethnic violence around me. My family always encouraged me to study. But a friend of mine, who was very intelligent and ambitious, was forced to marry.
In 2020, I joined Kabul University as a junior student. I wanted to get an education that would support my dream, to work for a fair and just society for all genders and ethnicities. I also participated in different civil activities, some of them organized by the Nordic countries. We, the young people of Afghanistan, believed in international cooperation. We believed that the international forces were in our country to build a more democratic society. We believed that we shared the same goal. With the space that democracy provided us when we grew up between the two Taliban regimes, we wanted to be part of building a brighter future for ourselves and our country.
The international forces left, but we are still here. The Taliban says that our lives don’t matter – but they do. We are human beings. We want to live, not only exist.
In today’s Afghanistan, only girls who are younger than 12 years old are allowed to go to school. And even then, they are mostly taught how to be obedient – to the Taliban. With the closure of schools and universities, millions of girls and young women have been deprived of education, leaving their families with little choice but to consider marriage as the only solution for their daughters.
More than half of my university classmates were forced to marry after 2022 when the doors of the university were closed for us. One of those victims is my close friend. Just six months ago, she messaged me that she was forced to marry her cousin because her dad feared for her safety. The Taliban had started arresting girls in Barchi Street, where many Hazara people live, blaming them for not wearing their hijabs correctly. The arrested women are often taken into prison and attacked there physically and sexually. Since our society puts the blame on the victim of sexual violence, me and my friends have mourned many young women who have taken their lives after being arrested. The father of my friend was scared that the same thing would happen to her. She was forced to marry her cousin because the family thought the marriage would protect her. She told me that now I am alive, but I can’t live anymore. My life has lost its meaning, she said.
In today’s Afghanistan, young men face challenges too. They are not allowed to wear the outfits they prefer, and Taliban officers often ridicule them in public spaces due to their hairstyle, beard style, or even for listening to music. Although young men are allowed to continue their education, they are not given the freedom to choose their desired fields of study. For example, all arts have been removed from the education system of Afghanistan.
All this has caused a massive brain drain in the past three years and serious mental health problems among the Afghan young generation. If these issues are not addressed, Afghanistan risks undoing all the progress achieved in the past two decades.
Millions of young Afghans live as refugees around the world and in neighboring countries, sometimes in terrible conditions. With no freedom to make even the smallest life choices and with the constant threat of violence, the young people of Afghanistan are forced to pack their beliefs and thoughts and leave their loved ones behind.
I am one of the victims of this situation. I never wanted to leave my country. I wanted to make it better. Now, I am living in Iran as a refugee with thousands of challenges. I had to flee because a Taliban found out that I had participated in international projects, and he was looking for me. If he had found me, my fate might have been the same as the fate of the girls I know, who could not live after being attacked by the Taliban in prison.
Despite all this darkness, after the Taliban’s rise to power, we did not give up on our dreams. With all my female classmates, I was denied the opportunity to graduate from the Kabul university, but I have not given up on my goal of making a change. Currently, I am a student at the American University of Afghanistan through online programs. Also, I work with a group of passionate young men and women who want to address the challenges in Afghanistan. Together, we aim to promote human rights in a community full of gender violence, racism, and religious discrimination.
Despite the security threats, we launched a program in June 2021 to introduce young girls to human rights concepts. When the Taliban denied women to meet each other in public places, we launched the home-to-home book club. We gathered at homes secretly to read and discuss books, with very strict security precautions – that I can’t share because, in Afghanistan, people are using the same precautions to secretly do things that are important for them but forbidden by the regime.
We started by reading Anne Frank’s diary. The thoughts and feelings of Anne Frank, a young girl having to hide from a regime that denied her humanity, felt eerily familiar. Like Anne Frank, I feel that something inside me calls me to try to do something, at least to write, even in the hardest times. I believe that books are the lanterns for young women under the Taliban regime. Despite my departure from Afghanistan, the reading club still operates through online platforms and gives us hope and a reason to fly.
But we need you. I ask, from the bottom of my heart, that the world would not forget us, especially the girls, who now live in the world´s most dangerous country for women. The young Afghan people need international support to continue our struggle for a just and fair future. The short-term support could be provided by giving the Afghan youth a voice in international platforms, giving large scale educational support via scholarships or online platforms, and pressure the governments to not support Taliban.
In the long term, the world should connect with Afghanistan’s civil society and support them to be empowered. It could be done by making channels with civil society through online and offline platforms as hiring special agents whom the grassroots can rely on to share Afghanistan’s harsh facts and their suggested solutions based on their and the society’s and local communities needs.
I strongly believe that civil society can build a democratic system. The development of the civil society between the two Taliban regimes in Afghanistan is a vivid example. We had an active connection with civil societies of other countries through training, education, and cooperation. Through that connection we learned the concept of human rights.
That connection widened my vision of the world, and I started to think of myself and other young Afghan women as agents of change, not victims of fate. Because of that, I could imagine myself being one day the first female president of Afghanistan. We dared to dream, speak out, study, and work. We wanted to build a country where our daughters could have the freedom that our grandmothers had and more – where they could see themselves as human beings with human value.
Today, I have been forced to leave my country, but I can’t be forced to give up my dreams. I want to amplify the voices of young people in Afghanistan, so the world does not forget us. As the situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen, the voices of young people are at risk of being silenced. With the eyes of the world on the current crisis, it is more important than ever to ensure that the stories and experiences of Afghan youth are not forgotten.
I want to invite the participants, who are mostly the researchers and scholars here, to do research on Afghan youth challenges. One interesting theme could be Afghanistan brain drain and the effects on country development, illiteracy crises within the next 5 to 10 years and the effects on international security, and many other themes. I’m convinced that your research would help Afghan youth and make sure our voice is not forgotten by the world.
In the end, let me thank Tampere University for inviting me to participate in the conference.
I strongly believe what Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. In today’s world, we must act together and defend democracy and rules-based world order against authoritarianism that denies human rights. Authoritarian regimes are not only a threat to their own people, but also to the world. Every victory for human rights and democracy in Afghanistan is also a victory for the rules-based world order that protects countries and citizens from arbitrariness and violence.
We, the young women of Afghanistan, feel in our skin the gravest results of that authoritarianism. We are on the side of everyone who is willing to defend human rights, equality, freedom, and democracy. I ask all of you who have the power to speak and act without the risk of being arrested, assaulted or killed, to be on our side in this struggle that defines our destiny.
Best wishes,
M.
Ms. M. is a young woman who grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. She studied at Kabul University. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she has not been able to study and pursue her goals, yet she has not given up her dream of making a change and taking part in building a better society. Currently she studies in a university through online or remote program. She also leads the Green Smile social team that works for gender equality and civil peace.
Ms. M. was one of the keynote speakers in the NYRIS2024 conference which was organised at Tampere University 12-14 June 2024. This is her speech she gave to the conference via video.
In her speech, she raises questions that are relevant also to Under Pressure research project. The speech highlights how young people’s struggles with pressure are time and place-bound and always connected to the society, from which the situation in Afghanistan is an extreme example. Her experiences also show that even under subordinate circumstances, young people have a need to collaborate with others and a desire to build a better and fairer society. Similarly, we in the UP -project also think that the opportunity to influence the building of a better world together with others is an important part of sustainable well-being. Therefore, we need to see these injustices raised by Ms. M. as joint issues of sustainability that have an impact on the kind of society and planet younger generations live in now and in the future.