A small domestic crisis provided the first spark that ignited a new career for Setara. She was home alone one night when the power went out, and she realised she had no clue how to fix the problem. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/how-a-sma...

Since it was introduced last Wednesday, women seeking treatment have been turned away from hospitals because they weren’t wearing the burqa, while access to government services has also been affected, causing widespread distress and triggering protest. rukhshana.com/en/taliban-i...

Three years on, Raihana still bears the physical scars of the attack on the Kaj Educational Centre in western Kabul. Her back still carries burn marks and her left leg is scarred by shrapnel. rukhshana.com/en/all-my-dr...

Within hours Karishma, who was widowed three years ago, had appeared in court on unspecified charges and been sent to Kabul’s notorious Pul-e-Charkhi jail, Afghanistan’s largest high-security prison. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/go-with-l...

“My heart was pounding as we put up the posters. I was terrified that the Taliban might catch and imprison us, or that we might be recognised through security cameras,” she said. rukhshana.com/en/from-kabu...

They say they are protecting our “honor,” our “values,” but let’s be honest — they are protecting their fear. They’re terrified of a woman who can think. Because once a woman begins to think, she begins to question. rukhshana.com/en/they-shou...

The Taliban held a press conference at the Afghan embassy in New Delhi on Sunday with female journalists present, two days after attracting a storm of criticism for reportedly turning women and foreign journalists away from a similar event. rukhshana.com/en/taliban-h...

This one was set up by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, a Rome-based body, at the behest of a group of four Afghan civil society organisations. rukhshana.com/en/peoples-t...

“Driving makes work easier and allows me to bring the employees safely to the workshop, without them facing harassment on the way,” she told Rukhshana Media. rukhshana.com/en/herat-is-...

Forootan, who has reported for Rukhshana Media in Kabul for two years and whose true identity we are concealing for her protection, saw several young women forced into a white van by the men in white coats. rukhshana.com/en/it-felt-a...

We're delighted to announce the appointment of Sarah Gibson as the new chair of the Rukhshana Media board of trustees. Sarah brings a wealth of experience in international journalism and is a committed advocate for equality and inclusion.1/3

Afghanistan was plunged into isolation on Monday as internet services were cut and mobile communications severely disrupted. rukhshana.com/en/afghanist...

Lessons in arts and culture or civic engagement are out. In their place, a renewed focus on religious studies, Sharia law and recitations of the Quran. This is education, Taliban-style. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/taliban-o...

That was until 2021, when the Taliban returned to power in her native Afghanistan. Now, the pool in Kabul where she used to swim is dry, the building abandoned and its doors bolted against the young women she once coached. rukhshana.com/en/swimming-...

the group’s supreme leader had personally taken the decision to allow the removal of women’s photos from the cards on the advice of the Dar al-Ifta, or religious council. rukhshana.com/en/afghan-wo...

Most of the children she sees are moderately malnourished, the legacy of poverty and a series of droughts that have compounded the difficulties of life in a region known for its harsh climate. rukhshana.com/en/how-one-a...

More than 800 people have been killed in an earthquake in a remote mountainous part of eastern Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman said on Monday. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/hundreds-...

The Taliban have issued an order targeting underground beauty salons operating in secret across Afghanistan, warning the women running them that they have to stop or face arrest. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/taliban-l...

When the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, many women in Afghanistan kept wearing the burqa, even though they were no longer required to do so. rukhshana.com/en/taliban-a...

When the Taliban issued a decree barring women from attending universities, “it felt like everything was over,” she says. “I just read books and scrolled Instagram, but I felt like my life had stopped.” Read more: rukhshana.com/en/against-a...

A hospital worker in Afghanistan has told Rukhshana Media how she was abducted by the Taliban, held captive and gang-raped over several days before being abandoned in the desert and left to die, in what she believes was a punishment for doing her job. rukhshana.com/en/the-afgha...

For more than a decade, Radio Nasim had operated as a rare independent and non-partisan voice in central Afghanistan, home to the country’s Hazara ethnic group. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/afghan-ra...

Mahnaz, whose real name we are withholding at her request, is one of around half a dozen women interviewed by Rukhshana Media in Herat who left Afghanistan hoping for a better life and have now returned, penniless and homeless. rukhshana.com/en/we-have-n...

🗣️ #WPSWednesday: In #Afghanistan, “most female-led businesses have collapsed, due to Taliban control, ineffective aid & a failure to go beyond symbolic actions that provide little genuine support for women’s enterprises.” @rukhshanamedia.bsky.social rukhshana.com/en/a-market-...

📢 An Update from Rukhshana Media: We’re thrilled to announce that Rukhshana Media is now publishing stories in Pashto, alongside our existing coverage in Farsi and English! Explore our Pashto-language content here: 🔗 rukhshana.com/ps/

The Taliban say they have arrested two people in Afghanistan for dubbing foreign television series for payment in violation of “Islamic values”, in an ongoing crackdown on the media. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/two-more-...

For this story, Rukhshana Media spoke to families and psychologists in Mazar-i-Sharif, which before the Taliban takeover in 2021 was one of Afghanistan’s most prosperous and liberal cities, to assess the impact of these changes on children. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/an-invisi...

Taliban arrest dozens of young Afghan women over hijab rules rukhshana.com/en/taliban-a...

She was a second-year agriculture student when the Taliban barred women from attending university, and could see her career plans disappearing before her eyes. If she couldn’t get a job, she decided, she would set up on her own. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/how-a-you...

Taliban forces are administering electric shocks to women over breaches of a hijab mandate so strict it even requires them to cover their faces in public, reporting by Rukhshana Media has found. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/taliban-f...

ICC issues warrant for Taliban’s supreme leader for persecution of women rukhshana.com/en/icc-issue...

“You filed a complaint with the commission, and I can’t forget that. You shamed me in front of everyone. You questioned my manhood,” she recalls him telling her. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/obsessed-wi…

Taliban arrest Afghan media workers over promotion of feminism rukhshana.com/en/taliban-a...

“I told him, ‘This time, when I return to Zebak, it will be with my degree in hand.’ But instead, I came back with tearful eyes and a heart full of pain,” says Lina as she recalls the day her hopes of a different life were cut short. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/how-afgha...

Her cracked lips seemed to scream the wounds of her life. Blood seeped from the fissures in her parched skin, and her eyes, like two deep hollows, had sunken into her thin, worn face. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/from-a-ch...

Hadia worries most about her 13-year-old daughter, fearing the girl could be pushed into an early marriage by her father-in-law. As a victim of forced marriage herself, she knows what that would be like. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/no-one-wi...

Mahnaz was just 15 when the Taliban returned to power and brought in a blanket ban on older girls attending school. Like many teenage girls in Afghanistan, she was devastated and furious. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/no-matter...

Adiba set up her shop in a market in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif that the Taliban set up for women in 2023, promising to promote it through advertising and flyers. But no customers came. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/a-market-...

How ordinary men became unpaid Taliban enforcers in their own homes Published in Partnership with @theguardian.com rukhshana.com/en/how-ordin...

Over the past five weeks, the Taliban have publicly whipped at least 86 individuals, including 22 women, across various provinces in Afghanistan, according to statements issued by the Taliban’s Supreme Court. rukhshana.com/en/taliban-p...

@rukhshanamedia.bsky.social continues to tell the stories the Taliban don’t want to be heard. In our first "Letter from the Field," @zahrajoya.bsky.social explains what American journalists can learn from her experiences fighting for #pressfreedom in Afghanistan. bit.ly/4kvRfLk

“They didn’t do anything to me during the day, but at night, the real nightmare began,” Safari told a Rukhshana Media reporter by phone from a neighbouring country where she now lives in exile with her three children. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/imprisone...

Over the past nearly four years, our work at Rukhshana has been to closely observe and report what women in Afghanistan are experiencing, and to ensure that what is happening to them does not remain hidden in media silence and indifference. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/misleadin...

Zakia, 16, from District 18 of Kabul, had a similar experience. She had her first period at age 12 without any prior knowledge or understanding. “I didn’t know what a period was or why it was happening to me. I had never even heard the word ‘period,’” Zakia said. rukhshana.com/en/as-the-wo...

Van Houdt worked in Afghanistan for over a decade. he had travelled to 26 provinces of Afghanistan and his work has appeared in publications such as FT Weekend Magazine, Der Spiegel, Stern, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, among others. rukhshana.com/en/interview...

In a quiet alley in western Afghanistan, a middle-aged woman swathed in a hijab is pleading with a dealer to buy one of the only remaining things she has to sell – hair cut from her and her daughters’ heads. Read more: rukhshana.com/en/its-worth...

Her work as a volunteer administering polio vaccines to Afghan children in a rugged and remote part of the country has always been risky as well as physically tough. Mobile vaccination teams have been attacked and killed in the past. rukhshana.org/en/meet-the-...

Nobel peace laureate and activist Malala Yousafzai has condemned the Taliban’s treatment of women in Afghanistan as “gender apartheid”, saying women are being punished simply for demanding their basic rights. rukhshana.org/en/nobel-lau...

One student, who spoke to Rukhshana Media on the condition of anonymity, described the daily inspections carried out by school supervisors at the gates of her madrasa in Herat. Read more: rukhshana.org/en/in-afghan...

“Rukhshana Media is one of the few platforms that is actually the voice of the Afghan women.” MalalaYousafzai speaks about the risks facing Afghan women journalists and why their work matters.