Zahra Joya
Zahra Joya is an award-winning journalist and campaigner, Time Magazine Woman of the Year (2022) and keynote speaker.
Twitter/X: @zahrajoya
Biography
Zahra Joya was born to a Hazara family in a small village in Afghanistan in 1992. She was 5 years old when the Taliban seized power. Under their regime education for girls was banned so Zahra, determined to learn, dressed as a boy, called herself Mohammed, and walked alongside her young uncle for two hours each day to get to school. After the US invaded her country and toppled the Taliban government in 2001, she was able to drop the disguise and enrol in law school. But moved by the untold stories of her female classmates, she decided to become a journalist, despite the dangers and difficulties of being a female reporter in Afghanistan.
In December 2020 she founded Rukhshana Media, the country's first feminist news agency. The name honours a 19-year-old girl who was stoned to death by the Taliban in 2015 for having eloped with a lover in order to escape an arranged marriage. Joya's aim was to bring light to the reality of life for Afghan women with stories published and reported on by local female journalists, covering issues such as rape, domestic violence and forced marriage. She was critical of the Taliban and reported on their crackdown on female public servants in the months before the US and its allies withdrew their troops. She also collaborated with The Guardian to publish the Women Report Afghanistan project, reporting on the Taliban takeover. After the Taliban returned to power, Zahra’s life was in danger and she was forced to flee the country. She continues to run Rukhshana Media in exile, and remains in contact with her team who send her reports from Afghanistan in secret.
Her work has won accolades across the world, including:
the Foreign Press 2022 Award from the U.S. Foreign Press Correspondents Association
the Nieman Foundation’s Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism,
Goalkeepers Changemaker 2022 Winner from the Gates Foundation
CNN Champion for Change
Marie Colvin Award 2021
one of BBC’s 100 Women in 2022
winner of the Sandford St. Martin Trust Award
Libertat d’Expressio 2022 (Spain).
She was profiled on the cover of TIME Magazine as one of its Women of the Year, interviewed by Angelina Jolie and was featured by CNN.
Books
Zahra Joya’s memoir, Betrayed (written with fellow journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman) will be published by Little Brown in 2026.