My name carries the weight of history, my dreams carry the hope of generations, and my heart carries the silent stories of countless women who have walked this land before me. Yet, even today, in the heart of my homeland, violence—in many forms—still shadows our lives.
In my land, violence wears many faces; it is the hand that strikes, the law that ignores, the voice that scolds, and the tradition that binds. It is not always visible, yet it lingers, a shadow on childhood, a chain on freedom. A wound that refuses to heal.
And yet, hope blooms. I see it in the eyes of my friends and girls who dare to learn and try to go ahead, who fight to go to school, in mothers who speak truth against the wind of oppression, in women who lift each other when the world pushes them down. Our courage is quiet but unyielding and our resilience is poetry written in the margins of history.
Every day, I see women silenced by fear, girls denied their education, and mothers struggling to protect their children from a world that often does not see them as equal.
Violence is not just physical, it is the cruel whisper of inequality, the invisible chains of tradition, and the harshness of indifference.
Today, on the international day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women, I speak not only for myself, but for every Afghanistani girl silenced, every woman oppressed, every soul denied her light. We deserve safety, not fear. We deserve education, not chains. We deserve respect, not indifference.
As an Afghanistani girl, I dream of a day when streets are safe for our laughter, when the schools are open and classrooms echo with our voices, when no child trembles at the thought of speaking her truth, and when every heart recognizes that women are not shadows, but the soul of humanity itself.
We are Afghanistani girls.
We are not fragile. We are not broken. We are storms that will not be contained, rivers that will not be dammed, voices that will not be silenced. We will rise. We will speak. We will exist fully, freely, and unapologetically. Our stories matter, our voices matter, and our lives matter.
– Zinat
Letter received from our students participating in our Mentorship program. Text altered for protection of our students and for grammatical changes.
