This is the second column by Noor Badshah Yousafzai My heart aches all the time at the helplessness of an Afghan woman who was born in Afghanistan, grew up in the dust, never slept in an air-conditioned room, never slept in a soft bed, never had a good meal, no clean water, no good shoes, no good clothes, no adequate health or education! Love and happiness are not part of the fate of Afghan women. Early marriage, early motherhood and lack of education are commonplace for an Afghan woman....

Women donning hijab or not has been a subject of discussion for many years now. Systems change, leaders change, borders of countries change but, one thing that remains constant is women being controlled by their looks. What the hijab represents can differ according to different systems. Some systems support women to have the freedom to express their religious behavior. While some would restrict it by stating reasons about secularity and make it look like it is all for the “good of the...

Last winter was stressful and cold for me: rain all day long for weeks, no sun, stormy weather and there were always dark clouds in the sky. All this took a lot out of me. Whenever I checked the weather on my phone, the app showed me a long list of rainy days. No sun, no glimps of hope!Sometimes I got angry at nature. Why wasn't there sunshine every day instead...I wished the situation had been reversed.There was a time when I lived in Karachi (Pakistan). There it was sunny and hot all the...

Our life today is incomplete without having heard about something related to COVID-19 and, it's understandable that after a point, people become tired of hearing about monotonous negative newsfeeds. But, the point of this article is not just to give another news about the virus. It aims to give information about violence against women and children during the pandemic. It has been a year since we started to change the way we live according to the virus which has taken over the world. The...