August 2024 marked the third anniversary of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, after twenty years of US-led military occupation. As they retook control of the country on 15 August 2021, a new ban was imposed on girls’ education, preventing millions from attending school beyond sixth grade. The situation worsened in December 2022 when the ban was extended to universities blocking women from completing their advanced education. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world that restricts female education.
September 2024 marks the second anniversary of the rise of the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran and its diaspora in the aftermath of the state murder of 23-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in police custody after she was arrested for revealing some hair under her hijab. In terms of both breadth and depth, the movement imposed the most unprecedented challenge to the political regime and became the manifestation of centuries of struggle, with deep roots entangling gender, ethnicity, religion, political ideology, colonialism, and relations between East and West.