What Drives You to This Dream?
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Earlier this month, Timothy Ryan, Asia/Europe director of the Solidarity Center, traveled to Afghanistan and spoke with Farida Nekzad, managing editor and deputy director of Pajhwok Afghan News and vice president of the South Asia Media Commission. A champion of press freedom and women’s rights in Afghanistan, Nekzad works under tremendous pressure at a time when women journalists in her country are being threatened and killed for their reporting. In this cross-post from the Solidarity Center website, Nekzad shows she is committed to staying in her country and continuing her work.
“What drives you to this dream?” That was the question I asked Farida Nekzad, a courageous woman pursuing her journalism career in an increasingly dangerous Afghanistan. I met Farida in Kabul, where the Solidarity Center was conducting a program with print, TV and radio journalists and their unions. We were trying to pull together disparate media outlets and worker organizations for a common purpose: to establish press clubs in Afghanistan.
The media mirrors the geographic, ethnic and political fragmentation of Afghanistan society and politics. Over the past few years, the Solidarity Center had worked with Afghan union partners and the International Federation of Journalists—which represents 600,000 members worldwide—to find ways to help build a national labor organization.
