Afghanistan

Najiba Ahmadi is quiet and unassuming – mild-mannered even. She is far from your typical revolutionary. Last week, Ms Ahmadi was among the suited government officials gathered in Britain to discuss Afghanistan’s future.

For the past five years she has been working to improve the lives of women and girls. The 32-year-old runs a shelter in Bamyan province where she offers legal advice.

The campaign for Saturday's presidential election in Afghanistan is featuring women in a more prominent role than ever before. One front-runner has a female running mate, and another has let his wife address campaign rallies—major departures from established practice in a conservative, Islamic country where women have long been kept out of politics.

Activists say the relative prominence of women in the election campaign underlines the progress Afghan women have made since the U.S. ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.

Mariam Wardak is one of those young Afghans with her feet in two worlds: At 28, she has spent much of her adult life in Afghanistan, but she grew up in the United States after her family fled there. She vividly remembers the culture shock of visits back to her family’s village in rural Wardak Province a decade ago.

We invite you to read the full article published April 1, 2014

Noorzia Atmar never wanted to leave Afghanistan. Not even after the beatings, knife attacks and bitter divorce; not even when her ex-husband turned up at her new workplace with a gun and sent thugs to the shelter where she had sought refuge. Only when the threats targeting her spread to include other women living in the shelter did she feel she had no choice but to flee.

Though disallowed from the 2014 presidential race, Fawzia Koofi is optimistic about her political career in Afghanistan. Yet it is not clear what will happen to the state of women's rights before the next one.

Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places anywhere in the world to be a woman, or to be a politician, and Fawzia Koofi, a deputy speaker of its national assembly, is both.

At least once a week, she receives a death threat from the Taliban or a warning from the security services about plots to assassinate her.