Dina Mahmoud (Kabul, London)
Amid estimates that more than half of the visual media in Afghanistan have stopped working during the past two years due to the ongoing political unrest in the country, a recent study revealed the escalation of challenges faced by female journalists there in performing their work, which forced the vast majority of them to stop. about job.
The study, prepared by the Afghan Women Journalists Association, indicated that among the most prominent of these obstacles is the limited ability of women working in the field of journalism in Afghanistan to access information, due to restrictions imposed on their movement, in the context of the problems that Afghan women in general suffer from. This level, which forces the majority of female media professionals there, to remain in their homes.
Officials of the association, which prepared the study, said that many of the female journalists whose opinions were polled, approximately 54 percent of them, expressed their complaints about unemployment and confinement at home, and considered that to be the greatest challenge they face.
Others also spoke about various obstacles, including suffering from poverty and lack of job security in the media institutions in which they work.
According to the study, excerpts of which were published by the website “Web India 123”, a large number of Afghan female journalists expressed their disappointment regarding the difficulties surrounding their access to the information necessary for them in their work, and the inability of many of them to attend certain press conferences, which hinders their efforts to prepare News reports assigned to them.
This coincides with reports reported by Afghan media, indicating that approximately 94% of female journalists in the country have become unemployed due to what are described as restrictions imposed on their work. This comes at a time when male journalists, in turn, express similar concerns about the decline in… Their ability to carry out their role, calling on the ruling authorities to pay greater attention to this file, and to ensure that information is published transparently and made available to all workers in the media field.
These challenges, according to observers, lead to the occurrence of what is described as a phenomenon of “mass exodus of professionals” from Afghanistan, whether to live in neighboring countries or head to Western countries, amid escalating unemployment rates, resulting from the shrinkage of new job opportunities, and the almost complete absence of foreign investments, in addition to About the decline in the volume of international aid sent to Afghans, since the Taliban movement returned to power more than two years ago.
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