Zan Times is an award-winning Afghan women-led digital newsroom that reports on human rights situations in Afghanistan with a focus on women and LGBTQ issues. Zan Times is a registered non-profit organization, based in Canada.[1][2][3][4][5]. Zan Times works with a team of mostly women journalists based in Afghanistan and in exile. It produces and publishes original investigations, feature reports, first-hand narratives, and opinion pieces in Farsi-Dari and English.[6]
Zan Times was established by a group mostly women journalists and writers in August 2022, one year after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan to report on the repression of women’s rights.[7] Ever since, Zan Times has been focusing on reporting women and LGBTQI+ rights and documenting the Taliban’s gender policies.
Zan Times has produced several major investigative reports, which were picked up and reported on by other news outlets and widely shared and discussed on social media.
- In October 2022, Zan Times reported on the Taliban’s murder of women activists in Mazar-e-Sharif as the regime cracked down on women’s protests.[8]
- In August 2023, a Zan Times investigation into the rise of female suicide in Afghanistan, published in partnership with the Fuller Project and The Guardian.[9]
- Public Afghan Women's Archive
- With financial support from the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project, Zan Times launched an archive documenting violence against socially and politically active women. The archive has documented 49 cases of violence against women, including 34 arrests, one disappearance, and 14 murders of women.[10]
Zan Times has received recognition for its impactful journalism:
- Winner of the 2024 Human Rights Press Award in the inaugural “Newsroom in Exile” category for its investigation documenting the rise of suicide among Afghan women and girls living under Taliban repression.[11]
- Winner of the 2024 Johann-Philipp-Palm-Award for Freedom of Speech and the Press, along with imprisoned Belarusian journalist Maryna Zolatava.[12]
- # Recognized as one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s eNews at its 23rd Annual Gala in New York City in November 2023.[13]
- A 2023 Zan Times investigative report into the rise of suicide for young women in Afghanistan was nominated for a One World Media print award and became a finalist in the Canadian Association of Journalists' top investigative journalism awards for 2023.[14][15]