Future Directions

Metra Mehran is a young social entrepreneur and human rights activist from Afghanistan. She is the 2021 finalist for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She is a non-resident fellow with NYU's Center for Global Affairs. 

Until July 2022, she worked as a scholarship program director with USAID Women Scholarship Endowment Program, which provides scholarships for women to pursue their education in STEM majors. She has managed various projects and programs for nonprofits that primarily focused on women empowerment, human rights, justice, media, and political accountability, the same areas she wants to promote.

She co-founded the Feminine Perspectives Movement ahead of Intra-Afghan peace negotiations. The aim was to provide a platform for women across Afghanistan to raise their voices to protect their fundamental rights and to ensure women's perspectives are reflected in peace negotiation processes. As a fellow with the National Center for Dialogue and Peace, she focused on encouraging intergenerational exchange and uniting different points of view (urban and rural, young and old) for sustainable peace.

 A leading voice in education and women empowerment, she writes opinion pieces for local and international outlets and delivers speeches. Her op-eds have been published in international outlets such as Foreign Policy and The Diplomat. She has addressed United Nations headquarter in New York, European Parliament, Oxford University, Rice University, Arkansas University, Texas A&M University, and many other venues.

Munisa Mubariz was born in Takhar province in Afghanistan. She has worked with national and international organizations for ten years. She has participated in civil activism for the past fifteen years. Her last position was M&E director in the Ministry of Finance in Afghanistan. 

She had participated as a political analyst for ten years in media. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she founded one of the women's main protest movements. She continues to advocate for equal rights for women in today's Afghanistan.

Project Director, Afghan Voices

Gaisu Yari is a former Commissioner in the Civil Service of Afghanistan and a human rights defender who holds a master’s degree in human rights from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and gender studies from the University of Virginia. Gaisu is the Director of the Afghan Voices of Hope project and travels around the world to collect the emotional narratives of fellow Afghan exiles. She is also an advocate and public speaker on gender justice. As an activist, she speaks at conferences, to individual organizations, and in the media on the rights of women in Afghanistan.