Resilience in the shadows: An Afghan aid worker’s hopeful journey

By Aria Abawi

Women aid workers in Afghanistan move mountains every day to serve vulnerable people. Parween* is one of those women who remains hopeful and continues to make a difference.

As a project lead with an international non-governmental organization (INGO), Parween has been instrumental in helping her organization reach 6,000 mothers and children to prevent abuse and also provide support for restoring survivors’ physical, mental and spiritual well-being. The Child and Mother Protection Project is being implemented across Herat and Ghor Provinces in western Afghanistan. 

Parween explained: “We’ve trained more than 100 midwives to care for pregnant women and their unborn children, ensuring they receive essential care in static health facilities before, during and after birth.”

Parween also takes pride in the project’s broader impact on the local economy: "We created job opportunities for more than 100 women [hired for other projects that needed a female-to-female approach] to reach even the most remote areas and deliver aid directly to those in need."

Leading such projects in Afghanistan is not without its difficulties. She explained: "Being human comes with its own challenges everywhere in the world, but being a woman in Afghanistan is especially difficult."

Parween’s personal journey mirrors the challenges many Afghan women face. She graduated from high school in 2012, but financial constraints forced her to delay university for two years. She began studying law in 2014, hoping to become a diplomat. "We named our study group the Diplomat Group, but that dream fell apart after the Taliban de facto authorities took control," she recalled.

Despite this setback, Parween found purpose in her work with the INGO. "From 2014 to 2022, we were running nearly 4,000 community-based education and accelerated-learning centre programmes in Herat and Ghor Provinces,” she said. “However, we had to discontinue these programmes due to budget shortages and growing restrictions.” 

They shifted their focus to health services but faced more setbacks. Parween explained: "Other factors that negatively affected these [health] projects included the de facto authorities’ ban and restrictions on women working for non-governmental organizations and the UN, restrictions on girls attending secondary school and delays in the signing of memorandums of understanding."

Despite these overwhelming hurdles, Parween remains hopeful: "God does not place a burden greater than one can bear. I encourage women to stay resilient; it may take some time, but things will eventually improve in their favour.”

Parween wishes that "Afghan women witness a day when asking for your basic human rights, including access to education and the right to work, is not a crime." 

She added: "People must understand that positive changes for women lead to positive changes in society. If we want to sustain our society, we need to grant women their human rights."

*Name has been changed.