Once again three Pakistani women for their tremendous work and activism in different fields are listed in the ‘BBC 100 Women 2021’ list.
Three women including youngest Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Abia Akram the Disability leader and Laila Haideri, the founder of Mother Camp.
Malala Yousafzai
The 24-year-old was previously named in the list well. “The youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani girls’ education activist and UN messenger of peace. She has spoken up for the right of young women to education since she was 11,” the outlet shared about the activist.
Abia Akram
An activist in the disability movement since 1997, when as a student managing her own disability, Abia Akram started the Special Talent Exchange Program (Step).
“She is the first woman from Pakistan to be nominated co-ordinator for the Commonwealth Young Disabled People’s Forum.
Akram is the founder of the National Forum of Women with Disabilities and has campaigned for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Inclusive Development.
Laila Haidari
With Kabul’s drug rehabilitation centre, Mother Camp, Laila Haidari has helped nearly 6,400 Afghans since 2010, despite taboos concerning drug users, the outlet shared.
“She established the camp using her own savings and financed it by opening a restaurant, run by recovering addicts, which had to close after the fall of Kabul,” the publication said of Laila.
Haidari’s family is originally from Bamyan but she was born a refugee in Pakistan.
A former child bride, married at 12, she is a vocal advocate of women’s rights, it further read.
She features in the acclaimed documentary Laila at the Bridge (2018), about her struggles to keep her centre open despite threats and opposition.
