On International Girls’ Day, I Am an Afghan Girl Holding Onto Hope

Today is International Girls’ Day — a day that, in many corners of the world, is filled with joy, hope, and celebration. A day when girls are encouraged to dream, to raise their voices, and to believe in the power they hold within. But here in Afghanistan, in a place where the sky has been darkened by restrictions on women and girls, this day carries a weight that words can barely hold.

For us, Girls’ Day is not marked by the sound of laughter in classrooms or the excitement of future plans. Instead, it is wrapped in a silence that has been forced upon us. Four years have passed since schools were closed to us. Four years since we were told that our dreams didn’t matter, that our voices should be quiet, that our existence should remain unseen.

In these years, even the simplest rights became privileges. And just recently, for two long days, the internet — our only bridge to the outside world — was shut down by the Taliban. In those two days, the silence became even heavier. It felt as if the world had drifted far away, leaving us in complete isolation. No messages could reach us, no information could pass through, and the window through which we breathed in hope was closed. It felt like we were being erased.

But even in that deep silence, something inside us refused to break. In the darkness, we held our dreams close, like small candles in our hands, protecting their fragile flames from the wind. We wrote our hopes in secret notebooks, whispered our dreams to the night sky, and promised ourselves that one day, the world would hear us again.

Girls’ Day should be a reminder to celebrate girlhood — but for us, it is a reminder of how easily the world can turn its back on us. While girls elsewhere step into classrooms, universities, and bright futures, we remain locked out, waiting for doors to open that should have never been closed in the first place.

Yet we are not weak. We are patient. We are not voiceless. We are waiting for the moment when our voices will rise together, stronger than ever. We are not shadows; we are light — and no wall, no silence, no darkness can extinguish that light.

My message to the world is that we must not let darkness outshine the light of girls’ dreams. They have taken our schools, our freedoms, and our right to speak — but they have not taken our hope. Stand with us, speak with us, and never forget us. Because when girls rise, the world changes.