Over three years have passed since the Taliban swept into Kabul making it now 1,110 days since they banned women and girls from receiving a formal education.
Sky News reporter Yalda Hakim partnered with Oriel College to establish a scholarship scheme for female Afghan students in March 2021.
Five months later, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban swept into Kabul, forming a de facto government which has imposed restrictions on the freedoms of women, including banning education.
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As of October 2024 1, it has been 1,110 days since women and girls aged 12 or over could receive a formal education in the country.
The Yalda Hakim Foundation and Oriel College offered Afghan woman Hadia Azizi to study a fully funded master’s degree as part of a scheme to support female students from the country.
Ms Azizi accepted the offer and will start her master’s degree in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies in October.
Yalda Hakim, the Afghan-born, Australian broadcast journalist and the Lead World News Presenter at Sky News, said: “I’m thrilled to be partnering with Oriel College and my friend, Neil Mendoza, on this exciting initiative.
“We are excited to offer this once in a lifetime opportunity to a talented woman who has been deprived of this kind of education as a result of the devastation in her country.
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“At the same time, we mark this happy milestone for our scholarship recipient, we must also remember that millions of young people and especially women and girls continue to be denied an education in Afghanistan.
“We remain committed to finding ways to help them learn and achieve their potential.”
Provost of Oriel College Lord Mendoza CBE said: “Yalda Hakim Scholarships, awarded on the basis of academic merit and offering full funding for graduate courses, mean brilliant female students who have faced adversity can benefit from the opportunities that study at Oxford provides.
“My thanks go to Yalda and the inspiring work of the Yalda Hakim Foundation for their tireless work to help those whose futures have been put at risk by the brutality of the Taliban regime.
“I am so looking forward to meeting Hadia now she has enrolled in the next chapter of her education.”
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Yalda Hakim, born in Kabul, is an award-winning international correspondent and documentary filmmaker and is the face of the Sky News show “The World with Yalda Hakim”.
In 2012, she joined BBC World News and was named Chief Presenter and hosted the flagship programme “Daily Global with Yalda Hakim” on BBC News until July 2023.
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