Farida Nekzad

Farida Nekzad has worked for more than twenty years as a journalist, media trainer and women's rights activist for various media. From 2004 to 2009 she worked as co-founder and editor-in-chief for Pajhwok News, the largest independent news agency in Afghanistan. In 2009, together with her husband, she founded the national news agency Wakht (Zeit) for investigative journalism. In 2013, she became Chairwoman of the Media Commission of the Independent Electoral Commission of Afghanistan (IECA).
Due to massive threats and attacks in her home country, she lived with her daughter in Hamburg for several years as a scholarship holder of the Hamburg Foundation for Politically Persecuted Persons. She is an honorary board member of the transnational organisation South Asian Women in Media and trained young journalists in Afghanistan as reporters and editors. 
Farida Nekzad was awarded the Courage in Journalism Award of the International Women's Media Foundation in 2008 and received the Golden Viktoria for Freedom of the Press in 2015. In 2017 she founded the Center for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ) in Kabul, which she has headed ever since.