Communiqué

IN THE FIELD
Alumni in the Field
Humayun Sarabi Is Working for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
After years of war and a long history of tribal rule,
living conditions in Afghanistan are hard and can be
especially brutal for women. Arranged marriages
and child marriages are not uncommon and many
women’s lives are marked by repressive customs and
domestic violence. A 2013 UNICEF survey found that
78 percent of girls drop out of school by the fifth
grade and a 2012 Human Rights Watch report estimated
that 87 percent of Afghan women experience
at least one form of physical, sexual, or psychological
violence and/or forced marriage in their lifetime.
“The story of women in Afghanistan is often of
tragedy—of a systematic and widespread violation
of their rights,” says HKS Alumnus and Roy and Lila
Ash Fellow Humayun Sarabi. “It is largely due to a
lack of education that many people do not see their
loved ones’ humanity and these crimes continue.”
Following his graduation from the Kennedy
School in 2011, Sarabi founded Women Empowered
Afghanistan (WE-Afghanistan) with like-minded colleagues
to confront the oppression and violence
against women he had seen throughout his career
as a humanitarian worker in the region.
“We were interested in starting a nonprofit to
work towards women’s rights in that part of the
world, but in a different way,” remarks Sarabi. “Because
most other NGOs in the area help women, but
in a temporary or materialistic sense—they build
shelters or provide clothing, which at some point
ends and the women are back in the same situation.
We’re trying to change how women are seen across
the culture.”
In October 2014, WE-Afghanistan launched its
first major initiative, the Human Rights Journalism
Training Program in Kabul. Funded by the Journalists
and Writers Foundation, the program is training 15
young and new journalists to use the media specifically
to advance women’s rights in Afghanistan. For
example, as part of their training, the journalists are
instructed to write a profile describing an instance
of domestic abuse and must include a list of resources
for women in the article. Participants are
drawn from across the country and have backgrounds
in law, human rights, and journalism.
The program spans six months with the first two
months devoted to training on journalistic principles,
safety, human rights, and democracy. It culminates
with an internship at different media organizations,
including print, television, and radio outlets, where
the journalists submit independent reports for publication.
Reports will be drawn from the journalists’
investigative research on human rights abuses, especially
those occurring in rural and remote areas.
Their stories will be translated into English and
published on the WE-Afghanistan website and
other venues, raising consciousness in the West of
women’s rights violations in the country. On a local
level, the reports will serve to humanize Afghan
women and make women aware of their rights.
“Many Afghan women don’t know how to access
justice or even whether their rights are being violated
in the first place,” says Sarabi. “Often the only
thing they know is that they’re being beaten up, and
many women believe that it is their husband’s right
to hurt them. We’re using journalism to advocate
that domestic violence is a crime under the laws of
Afghanistan and there are places they can go to receive
help.”
Sarabi hopes that WE-Afghanistan will soon have
the resources to build schools in Afghanistan,
though its current focus is on empowering women
through its journalism training program.
“Many of the problems in Afghanistan can be
traced back to the lack of education,” says Sarabi.
“Many Afghan women
don’t know how to access
justice or even whether
their rights are being
violated in the first place,”
says Sarabi.
“It is easy for the Taliban to convince an illiterate person
that women should be confined inside their
homes based on religious principles, but is harder to
convince an educated person of that. I believe that
if we had more educated Afghans, then we would
have a stronger, safer democratic society.”
Sarabi credits his time at the Harvard Kennedy
School and his fellowship through the Ash Center for
his views on the intersection of women’s rights, education,
and democracy. Sarabi reflects, “The seminars
I attended and the research I conducted at the
Ash Center expanded my knowledge of how democracy
should function.” Sarabi continues, “I see education
as the biggest pillar of democracy and
although there isn’t one idea or initiative that can
solve all of Afghanistan’s problems, I believe that increasing
access to education, and informing women
of their rights, are good first steps.” C
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
13