Reporting during gender apartheid in Afghanistan
Sat 18 April 2026
17:00
Free
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Nearly five years into Taliban rule, Afghan women are being systematically silenced under what many in the international community describe as gender apartheid. Making their voices heard is both dangerous and extraordinarily difficult. Afghan female journalists are forced to work in clandestine conditions, while women reporters from abroad are routinely denied visas to enter the country. Yet despite these barriers, journalism continues.
This lively panel discussion brings together women journalists who have reported extensively from the country, to explore how their work persists in the face of repression:
> Zahra Joya, founder and editor-in-chief of Rukhshana Media, an Afghan women-led media organisation
> Alex Crawford, special correspondent for Sky News and reporter of the award-winning Women at War: Afghanistan documentary
> Amie Ferris-Rotman, global news editor of New Lines Magazine and co-author of Zahra's upcoming book The Vanishing Girl of Kabul
Moderated by Meera Selva.
Organised in association with Rukhshana Media.
Modified more than a month ago
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Alex Crawford
Alex Crawford is Special Correspondent for Sky News and reporter of the award-winning Women at War: Afghanistan documentary. Alex travels the world covering major stories, often from war zones. A founding journalist at Sky, she has been based in Delhi, Johannesburg, and the UAE. Her reporting has seen her detained, abducted, interrogated, and under fire from bullets, tear gas, IEDs, and shelling. She was the first to independently gather first-hand evidence of the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, now before the ICC. Alex also broadcast live from Tripoli's Green Square as rebels took Libya's capital. She is a five-time RTS Journalist of the Year, has won four BAFTAs, five international Emmys, the James Cameron Award for outstanding journalism and moral integrity, and the Charles Wheeler Award for contribution to broadcast journalism. Alex is Patron of the NCTJ and holds honorary doctorates from UAL and Solent University for services to journalism.
Amie Ferris-Rotman
Amie Ferris-Rotman is a British-American journalist based in London, where she is currently Global News Editor at New Lines Magazine. She spent nearly a decade in Russia as a Reuters and Washington Post correspondent. Her articles have also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Times and Foreign Policy. A former Reuters senior correspondent in Afghanistan, she founded Sahar Speaks, empowering Afghan female journalists, earning the British Press Award for Innovation (2016). A Stanford JSK Fellow, she holds degrees in Russian Studies and serves on Rukhshana Media’s board. She is the co-author, with Zahra Joya, of the upcoming The Vanishing Girl of Kabul (2 July 2026, Hachette).
Zahra Joya
Zahra Joya is an Afghan journalist and the editor-in-chief and founder of Rukhshana Media, a news agency reporting on life for women and girls in Afghanistan. Rukhshana was named after a young woman who was stoned to death by the Taliban in 2015. Its reports are published in both Persian/Dari and English, and under pseudonyms to protect the journalists’ identities. Just before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in May 2021, she collaborated with The Guardian and published the Women Report Afghanistan project, to expose how women were being treated in the country. After being critical of the Talban, she fled to the UK, where she continues to run Rukhshana Media channel. She was named one of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year 2022 and listed in the BBC list of 100 influential women in the same year. She was recently appointed a By-Fellow at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge (UK).
Meera Selva
Meera Selva is Chief Executive of Internews Europe. She was previously the Deputy Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and is a co-founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. She is an experienced journalist who has reported from the field across Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, including several years at the Associated Press.She is also a senior research associate of the Reuters Institute and an associate fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford, as well as a member of the Center for Economic Policy Research. Her research focuses on issues of press freedom, diversity in newsrooms, and media sustainability.
Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.