20 Jun 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, News, United Kingdom
Authoritarianism has grown stronger all over the world, and the space for free expression has shrunk. Journalists, writers, and activists are being silenced simply for speaking the truth. Many face threats, arrest, or violence at the hands of those in power.
In Afghanistan, since the Taliban returned to power, freedom of expression has nearly disappeared. Independent journalism is no longer possible. In today’s Afghanistan, expressing your opinion, especially if you are a woman, is not just discouraged, it is dangerous. If you criticise the Taliban’s policies, you are certainly destined for jail.
Over the past four years, thousands of Afghans, including many journalists, have been forced to flee, have been imprisoned or tortured, or have fallen completely silent out of fear.
This is a clear violation of international human rights laws, which recognise freedom of expression as one of the foundations of a just and democratic society. But across the world, censorship is on the rise. The list of people imprisoned for writing an article, attending a peaceful protest, or posting something critical online keeps growing. Many of these individuals have sought safety in Western countries.
Unfortunately, with Donald Trump’s new administration, immigration policies, particularly in the USA, have become much stricter. As a result, fewer at-risk journalists and writers are being offered asylum, even when their lives are clearly in danger.
The UK remains one of the countries that continues to offer refuge to some of these individuals. But the need is much greater. I urge the UK government to expand its support and provide real protection for those forced to flee their countries for telling the truth.
Every journalist, writer, professor, or activist who finds safety in a democratic country carries with them the voice of many others left behind. Protecting these voices is not just a humanitarian act, it is a defence of truth, history, and freedom itself.
I am one of those journalists. I once worked freely in Kabul, reporting stories and raising awareness of issues. But when the Taliban regained power in 2021, I had no space in my own hometown. As a woman and a journalist, it was a double danger. When journalists started being arrested, tortured, or forced into hiding, I realised I had no choice but to leave. Escaping was painful but staying meant silence – or worse.
Now, I live in the UK. This country not only gave me shelter but also allowed me to raise my voice again. Here, I can write, interview, and speak freely. I can be a voice for those women whose rights and voices have been brutally taken away.
Giving refuge to at-risk journalists is not just about saving individuals, it is about defending the values of democracy and free speech. Countries like the UK show they stand for these values not just in words but through real action.
By welcoming journalists like me, the UK has shown it respects truth, protects the vulnerable, and supports future generations who dream of justice. I may live far from home, but I am still working every day to amplify the voices of Afghan women and girls living under oppression.
Sadly, many Afghan journalists are still trapped in countries like Iran and Pakistan. They live in uncertainty, without freedom, without work, and without hope. If the world ignores them, their voices, and their stories, may be lost forever.
We must not forget that in any society, freedom of expression allows people to ask questions, challenge power, and share new ideas. It leads to innovation, growth, and justice. As the British philosopher John Stuart Mill said in his book On Liberty, freedom of speech is essential to personal development and social progress. Through open debate, we find truth and correct our past mistakes.
18 Jun 2025 | Egypt, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine
At a quiet corner of an apartment in Cairo, Palestinian journalists now sit staring at a blank screen. Just months ago, they were reporting from the heart of Gaza – documenting airstrikes, interviewing survivors, filing stories that made global headlines.
Today, they’re unemployed, unheard, and in exile.
More than 250 journalists from Gaza are now living in Egypt after fleeing the Israeli military campaign that began in October 2023, according to figures from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which now has a presence in Cairo. Others have evacuated the Strip for countries including Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Canada since the start of what we call a genocide.
Once at the frontlines of war reporting, these journalists are now caught in a different kind of crisis – one marked by silencing, legal limbo, and professional erasure.
Most of these journalists were freelancers, with no long-term contracts, no medical insurance, no institutional protection, and no guarantee of employment after evacuation. Their cameras are packed away. Their microphones sit unused. Without work permits, they can’t be legally employed in Egypt, and with little to no support, many are struggling to survive.
“I was a journalist until the day I crossed the border.” “Now, I am just a refugee with a press card that no longer holds any weight.” This is how Palestinian journalists describe their current situation.
A minority of journalists who worked with international news outlets – those with permanent staff contracts – have been more fortunate. Some were able to join the bureaus of their agencies abroad, while others continue to receive their salaries, even while displaced. But for the vast majority, the collapse of Gaza’s media infrastructure has left them jobless, voiceless, and adrift.
And the barriers are not only bureaucratic – they are political. Egypt has denied work permits to Palestinians evacuating the war in Gaza, including professionals, journalists, and academics.
This policy effectively bars Gaza’s journalists from continuing their work. No matter their skills, credentials, or experience, they are not allowed to contribute to the media landscape in the country where they have sought refuge.
Worse still, for those of us who worked for Al Jazeera, a separate wall exists.
The Qatari-based network has been banned in Egypt since 2011, following the uprising that overthrew the former president Hosni Mubarak. Its bureau was shut down, and journalists affiliated with the network were subjected to persecution and arrests. Today, more than a decade later, that ban remains in place. This means that Al Jazeera journalists from Gaza, now exiled in Egypt, are prohibited from working, even remotely, fearing the risk of being persecuted.
Having worked as an Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, I now find myself among those silenced – not because I’ve stopped caring, not because I’ve lost the will to report, but because the system has made it impossible for me to continue. The war didn’t just displace us from our homes; it severed us from our profession, from our identities, and from the world we once informed.
Our voices were once loud enough to echo around the world. Now we whisper into the void. The silence is devastating – not just professionally, but emotionally and psychologically.
For journalists, reporting is not just a job. It is a calling and a mission. We bear witness, we document truth, we speak for the voiceless. Being denied the right to report is like being denied the right to breathe.
Many journalists now live in small apartments, surviving on the goodwill of friends, NGOs, or savings that are quickly running out. Some are supporting children and elderly family members, with no income and no clarity on what the future holds. The stress is enormous. The uncertainty is constant.
And yet, the genocide in Gaza continues. Our colleagues who remain inside – those who survived airstrikes, lost family members, or saw their homes flattened – continue to risk everything to report. But even they are running out of tools, electricity, and time. Many of them rely on us in exile to amplify their voices. And we are desperate to do so, but unable.
The consequences of this silencing reach far beyond individual careers. They represent a systemic erasure of the Palestinian narrative. At a time when truth-telling is critical, Gaza’s journalists – those who carry the first-hand accounts, the context, the memory – are being sidelined.
This is not just a loss for us. It’s a loss for journalism, for history, for the world.
The international community, especially global media outlets and press freedom organisations, must act. Gaza’s exiled journalists need legal recognition, support, and pathways to work – whether through temporary relocation programmes, freelance partnerships, or legal aid to navigate the permit systems.
We need allies; we need solidarity; we need our roles as truth-tellers to be restored.
We didn’t choose to leave. We fled for survival. But we still carry the burden of our people’s stories. We still carry the fire and drive to tell them. What we need now is the space and permission to speak.
Let our silence not be the final chapter.
13 Jun 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, Honduras, Mexico, News, Newsletters, Pakistan
When news broke on Monday of 17-year-old Sana Yousaf’s murder, it was first described as a potential “honour-based killing”. Yousaf, a social media influencer from Pakistan, had become a visible presence online. As outraged as we all were, Index didn’t comment initially, wanting to find out more of the facts. Now we have them. A 22-year-old man has confessed to killing her after she allegedly rejected him romantically.
At first glance, this horrendous murder might not appear to be a straightforward case of censorship. But it’s still part of a broader pattern: women’s voices being suppressed through violence.
Inside Pakistan, Yousaf’s death has triggered both grief and backlash. According to Usama Khilji, director of the digital rights group Bolo Bhi, some – mostly men – have questioned her online presence and even called for her family to delete her accounts. These attempts to silence her posthumously are a horrible sign of how threatening female visibility remains. More horrible still: Yousaf is not alone. In January, for example, teenage TikToker Hira Anwar was murdered by her father, who said he found her posts “objectionable”.
Pakistan is not an outlier. Rather these killings are part of a global pattern of femicide, the gender-motivated killing of women done by men who seek to control what women say and wear, who they love and more broadly how they live. While this control is extreme in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Turkey, it’s just as entrenched across Latin America.
Naming this violence is a struggle. In Mexico, where Amnesty International estimated in 2021 that 10 women and girls were murdered every day, Index reported in 2023 on the widespread misclassification of femicides as homicides, which was seen as a strategy to protect the country’s global image. That was under former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Under the country’s new, first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, there may be change. When 23-year-old influencer Valeria Márquez was shot dead last month while livestreaming on TikTok, the gender-based nature of her killing was formally acknowledged by the Jalisco prosecutor’s office.
These labels matter because, without calling it femicide, it’s hard to confront the systems that routinely and violently deny women a voice. Unsurprisingly, such systems deny women justice too. In Honduras – the country with the highest femicide rate per capita in Latin America – these murders don’t just go periodically unpunished, they’re often undocumented. Many are too afraid to name an assailant, fearing retaliation. Some survivors of violence are even told that women “should not talk about these things”.
So let’s not treat Sana Yousaf’s death as the act of a lone, disturbed man. Let’s call it what it is: another attempt to silence women who dare to speak.
30 May 2025 | Afghanistan, Asia and Pacific, News, Volume 54.01 Spring 2025
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Over the past 15 years, Bibi Jan has already endured the unimaginable pain of losing four of her children due to malnutrition and inadequate medical facilities. She is now deeply anxious about the health of two of her three surviving children.
I met the 30-year-old in December 2024 at the Zabul Provincial Hospital. I found her sitting beside her two sick children, aged six and three, her face etched with worry. She spoke in a trembling voice.
“Each of [my children] passed away after reaching six months or one year of age,” she told me. “Now, my two other children are also sick. I brought them to this hospital for treatment. The doctors have admitted them. I am staying here while my husband visits us during the day and returns home at night.”
Bibi got married when she was only 15 to a man who was 15 years her senior. “My father gave me away in marriage when I did not consent,” she said. Since then, she has given birth nine times, but only one daughter and two sons have survived.
The women and children’s ward of the hospital was so overcrowded that it was nearly impossible to find any space. Every bed was occupied, and some patients were sharing a single cot or lying on the floor, waiting desperately for medical attention.
Sitting next to Bibi was another woman, 37-year-old Fatima, who had brought her two-and-a-half-year-old child in for treatment. “Due to a lack of sufficient food, my children suffer from malnutrition and one of them is severely ill,” she said. “We barely have anything to eat at home, let alone access to proper medical care.”
The tragic accounts of Bibi and Fatima are just two of countless stories that reflect the dire humanitarian crisis in the southern province of Zabul. Women and children in this province face life-threatening health risks daily. The Zabul Provincial Hospital, which is the only major healthcare centre in the region, is grappling with critical shortages of medicine and medical equipment.
One of the doctors at the hospital, who preferred to remain anonymous, described the grim reality of their struggle: “We are trying to save patients’ lives with the minimal resources available, but we lack adequate medicine and equipment. Foreign aid is not distributed properly, and most of it goes to specific Taliban-affiliated groups. Ordinary people, especially women and children, are deprived of this aid.”
The drastic reduction in international aid following recent political changes has plunged Afghanistan’s healthcare system into an unprecedented crisis. This includes both the reduction of government healthcare assistance within the country since the Taliban’s takeover and recent reductions in foreign aid, particularly from Donald Trump’s administration in the USA and his cuts to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding.
Organisations that once provided crucial support to medical centres in Zabul have either suspended their assistance or significantly reduced the resources they provide. Meanwhile, the Taliban lacks the capabilities and infrastructure to manage this growing catastrophe, and has actively enforced policies that make healthcare access harder.
A worsening nationwide problem
According to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Afghanistan has a maternal mortality rate that is nearly three times the global average – for every 100,000 births, 600 women die.
In a recent report, the OCHA warned that this year nearly half of Afghanistan’s population – or 22.9 million people – will require humanitarian assistance just to survive. The report also stated that 14.8 million people, more than a third of the country’s population, will face acute food insecurity by early 2025.
This crisis extends far beyond Zabul. The Abu Ali Sina Balkhi Provincial Hospital in Balkh is also overwhelmed by the growing number of patients and the worsening economic situation.
At about 4pm one afternoon, a sudden commotion erupted in the overcrowded hallways of the hospital. A 42-year-old man, visibly pale and weak, was lying on a stretcher. He was a roadside vendor who had earned no income that day. His blood sugar levels had spiked dangerously high, leaving him unable to move.
His 12-year-old son and a coworker, both visibly distraught, had rushed him to the hospital. Despite the doctors’ immediate attention, his condition was too severe for him to be saved. About 20 minutes later, a doctor’s voice emerged from his office: “The patient has passed away.”
Hospital officials then turned to his young son and requested that he contacted a family elder to collect the body.
Many of the patients seeking treatment in hospitals across the country have lost their jobs, struggle with chronic illnesses exacerbated by economic hardship, or suffer from the psychological toll of Taliban rule. Additionally, cases of suicide among women, driven by social issues such as domestic violence and forced marriages, have been steadily increasing.
Taliban restrictions further endanger healthcare access
The OCHA has expressed serious concerns over the increasing restrictions imposed by the Taliban on women’s employment and education in the healthcare sector. These policies have drastically limited access to essential medical services for mothers and children across Afghanistan.
According to the OCHA, the country’s economy has shrunk by nearly a third since August 2021. The ongoing political crisis, an inefficient financial system, severe cuts in development budgets and Taliban-imposed restrictions have seriously damaged the country’s ability to deliver basic services.
The organisation highlighted the alarming maternal mortality rate during childbirth in particular, emphasising that the Taliban’s restrictions on women working in healthcare have made access to medical care increasingly difficult.
In addition to these policies, last year the Taliban also banned women from studying in medical institutes, further depleting the already inadequate number of female healthcare workers and stopping them from being able to train in professions such as nursing, midwifery and dentistry. These were some of the only educational avenues left for women.
The desperate need for female doctors
In Badakhshan province, women are particularly affected by the shortage of female doctors. Fatima, a 24-year-old woman, expressed her deep concerns: “I always accompany my relatives who come from remote areas to the central hospital in Badakhshan because they don’t know the way. The situation is truly worrying. There are so many patients but not enough female doctors. We must wait for hours just to get seen by one.”
She recounted the harrowing experience of one of her neighbours who suffered severe complications due to a lack of doctors.
“Several specialised doctors we had have all left the country,” she said. “My neighbour had to undergo surgery in the absence of specialists, but due to severe bleeding she had to go through another surgery within a week. She nearly died.”
Dr Noshin Gohar Karimi, who works at Faizabad Provincial Hospital, voiced similar concerns on his Facebook page: “The workload in Faizabad Provincial Hospital has exceeded the capacity of the staff. Unfortunately, due to a lack of budget, increasing bed capacity and staff recruitment are not possible. The hospital was originally designed for 128 beds, but today more than 310 patients are admitted. In the paediatric ward, which has only 30 beds, 120 sick children and their mothers are currently being treated.”
The healthcare workforce crisis
The shortage of medicines and lack of funding remain among the most pressing challenges in Afghanistan’s healthcare system. A nurse at a government-run, public hospital in Kabul highlighted the ongoing crisis: “We used to have more staff, but over the past two years the workforce has decreased significantly. Now, one person has to do the work of several people and, as a result, patients do not receive adequate care. In addition to that, doctors and nurses face persistent delays in their salaries.”
She added: “Before the Taliban took over, medical equipment was already scarce but, after that, even that small supply stopped. Many machines have become old and worn out, and hospital officials say they have no budget to replace them.”
A nurse at a private hospital in Kabul also reported severe staff shortages in various departments. “There is a lack of personnel in all sections. In the nursing department, especially, we do not have enough staff and are forced to do the work of several people alone, while our salaries have also been reduced.”
With a collapsing healthcare system, increasing restrictions on women and dwindling international aid, Afghanistan faces a healthcare catastrophe that threatens the lives of millions.
Additional reporting by Rukhshana Media reporters
