{"id":18577,"date":"2024-11-24T04:09:32","date_gmt":"2024-11-24T04:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18577"},"modified":"2024-11-24T04:09:32","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T04:09:32","slug":"dont-forget-us-teenage-refugee-reminds-gen-z-of-silenced-afghan-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=18577","title":{"rendered":"'Don't forget us': Teenage refugee reminds Gen Z of silenced Afghan girls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nila Ibrahimi beat 165 other nominees to be named this year’s International Children’s Peace Prize winner<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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When Nila Ibrahimi set out to build a website telling the stories of Afghan girls, it wasn’t just to give them a voice.<\/p>\n

The 17-year-old Afghan refugee was also determined to remind her fellow Gen Zs in her adopted country, Canada, that they were similar – they even listened to Taylor Swift just like other teenage girls around the world.<\/p>\n

“I want to make them as real as possible so that other people, especially young people, Gen Z specifically, can put themselves in their shoes,” she told the BBC.<\/p>\n

Nila spoke to the BBC earlier this week, before picking up the International Children\u2019s Peace Prize previously won by education campaigner <\/b>Malala Yousafzai and climate activist Greta Thunberg.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The rules Afghan women are living under in Afghanistan have been described as “gender apartheid” by the United Nations<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Nila’s is, perhaps, not an easy task. The plight of Afghanistan’s women and girls can feel a world away to young people living in Canada, where Nila found a home after fleeing her home country as the Taliban took over three years ago.<\/p>\n

In that time, the Taliban have banned teenage girls from education, banned women from travelling long distances without a male chaperone, and now ordered them to keep their voices down in public – effectively silencing half the population.<\/p>\n

The Taliban have defended the rulings to the BBC previously by saying they align with religious texts.<\/p>\n

“The differences [between Afghanistan and Canada] are vast, so it makes it hard for them to feel connected,” acknowledges Nila.<\/p>\n

That is why she helped set up HerStory – a place where she and others help share the stories of Afghan women and girls in their own words, both inside and out of the country.<\/p>\n

“So many times we are lost in the differences that we don’t see the similarities and that’s our goal, to show that to the world.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nila Ibrahim was chosen from 165 nominees as the 20th winner of the prestigious prize.<\/p>\n

The award recognises not just the work done on HerStory, but also her passion for standing up for women’s rights in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Nila’s first stand for women’s rights came in March 2021, when she joined other young Afghan girls in sharing a video of her singing online.<\/p>\n

It was a small but powerful protest against a decree by the then-director of education in the Afghan capital, Kabul, who tried to ban girls over 12 singing in public.<\/a> The attempted order was never implemented.<\/p>\n

“That was when I really understood the importance of performing, the importance of speaking up and talking about these issues,” explains Nila, who was part of a group called Sound of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

But less than six months later, everything would change – and, aged 14, she would have to flee with her family as the Taliban arrived.<\/p>\n

The family – who are part of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority – made the difficult journey to Pakistan, where they spent a year before being granted asylum in Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It was, after 12 months without education, a “breath of fresh air”, she says.<\/p>\n

There, Nila was reunited with her friends from the singing group. <\/p>\n

She was also invited to speak at events, about her experiences of Afghanistan, allowing her to advocate for all the girls left behind.<\/p>\n

People, she says, were surprised at how eloquent she was. But Nila knew there were millions of women and girls in Afghanistan who were just as capable – although with less access to the opportunities she had.<\/p>\n

“So I thought if my potential can surprise these people and they don’t know about how educated girls from Afghanistan can be, what if that information was accessible to them?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Afghan women have faced increasing restrictions since the Taliban returned to power – including on how loud they can be in public<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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HerStory – the website which grew out of this thought – started in 2023. It features interviews and first person accounts from both refugees and women inside Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

The idea is to create a safe space where a group of people who “grew up with the stories of the first period of Taliban and how horrible the lives of women were at the time” share their stories – and their “shock and anger” at finding themselves in an increasingly similar situation.<\/p>\n

The anger is a feeling Nila tries to keep separate from her work.<\/p>\n

“When you see Afghanistan going back in time in 20 years, of course it makes you fear,” she says.<\/p>\n

“It’s a shared feeling. It’s a shared experience for girls anywhere.”<\/p>\n

The award, she says, is a chance for Afghan girls to once again remind the world about the restrictions they face on a daily basis – a reminder “not to forget Afghan girls”.<\/p>\n

Marc Dullaert, founder of the KidsRights Foundation, which runs the award, pointed out that a “staggering” number of young women were currently being excluded from education.<\/p>\n

“Nila\u2019s inspirational work to provide them with a voice that will be heard across the world makes her a truly worthy winner of this year\u2019s 20th International Peace Prize,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

It is also a reminder that her generation – while young – can make a difference, Nila hopes.<\/p>\n

“I think so many times when we talk about issues and different causes, we talk about it with the very adult like approach of oh, this is very serious,” she says. <\/p>\n

“The world is a very scary place, but there is an approach that is more Gen Z-like… and we can take little steps and… do whatever we can.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: <\/em> www.bbc.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getty Images Nila Ibrahimi beat 165 other nominees to be named this year’s International Children’s Peace Prize winner When Nila Ibrahimi set out to build a website telling the stories of Afghan girls, it wasn’t just to give them a voice. The 17-year-old Afghan refugee was also determined to remind her fellow Gen Zs in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}