Panel 2: The Present

Nayera Kohistani has been fighting for Afghan women's rights for the past 12 years. Before August 2021, she was a teacher and civil rights activist. After August 2021, When the Taliban didn't let her and other Afghan women continue their work, she joined with other Afghan women to organize some of the biggest protests against Taliban rule in Afghanistan. She states in her email dated  December 21, 2022, "When the Taliban took over my country, we started our demonstrations on streets of Kabul, Mazar e Sharif, Herat, Kapisa and order provinces against Taliban rule in Afghanistan. In this way, I have experienced threats to Talib's prison, but I stand by the promise I made, and I will fight to the end for my mother, my sister, my daughter, and all the women of my homeland."

A  Kitabkhane-ye Zan, or "Women's Library,"  opened its doors in August of 2022 in Kabul at the height of Taliban restrictions.

The library is meant to symbolize an oasis for women to self-educate and offer peaceful resistance against the Taliban for denying women their fundamental educational rights. Zholia Parsa is one of the founders of this "underground" library.  Zholia is also an activist and one of the leaders of the female educational and equal rights empowerment movement.  

Sana is a fifth-year student at Kabul Medical Science University. She was born in 1998 in Kapisa province. Kapisa province is the smallest of all thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. She spent her childhood in the village and moved to Kabul to pursue her education. She used to volunteer in cultural and education centers empowering women to pursue their careers. She currently volunteers as a teacher at an education center in Kabul, where she teaches language and sciences to underprivileged girls. For her, the deprivation of fundamental human rights of female Afghan children and women to pursue their education and unequal treatment in contemporary Afghanistan has been more offensive and extremely distressful than anything else in today's society. Her biggest aspiration is to improve women's and children's situation so that they pursue their education and other dreams in today's Afghan society on an equal footing with men.