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A young women’s rights activist from Afghanistan recently left the country and travelled to Iran.

Women in both countries have few rights – but the activist told Sky News that when she arrived she saw a massive difference between the two places.

That was until Iranian women revealed how they suffered under the Islamic Republic’s regime.

We are keeping the activist anonymous to protect her safety. This is her story:

Almost three years of living in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime has systemically erased me and my fellow Afghan women from public life.

During this time, I struggled with deep depression and mental health crises, like countless women in the country.

There was no hope my situation would improve so my brother urged me to go travelling with him.

For most of people in Afghanistan, there are two countries we can travel to – Pakistan and Iran.

But because I’m a women’s rights activist and there has been a women’s revolution in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, I chose to go to Iran.

Mahsa Amini
Image:
Mahsa Amini. Pic: Reuters

In the first days of our arrival, I could see women everywhere – in the streets, schools, universities, parks, restaurants – free to wear and do what they want at any time.

One day, I went to a beauty salon in the Mashhad area of Iran.

When I entered, there was a woman who just entered the salon before me. She was crying and all the women in the salon were welcoming her with tears and open hugs.

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Waiting for my turn, I got more information about Sapideh. She was a well-known client of the salon for years.

She had lost her father recently – her only parent – and had been at home overcoming her grief and loss. It sounded like she didn’t have any other family or friends to support her in this difficult time.

The ladies in the beauty salon listened to her words and cries and everyone did their best to comfort her.

When I was leaving, I could see that three women were working on her face, hair, and nails. She had stopped crying.

FILE PHOTO: Iranian women walk on a street amid the implementation of the new hijab surveillance in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2023. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY./File Photo
Image:
Iranian women on a street in Tehran as new hijab surveillance was implemented last year. Pic: Reuters

In Afghanistan, beauty salons – the small spaces that allow women to help and support each other – are all closed.

On my way to the hotel, I saw women driving, or women without hijab who were free – and my mind could only think of Afghan women.

Because we are used to it, we don’t know that our rights and our freedoms have been stolen from us.

The Taliban have dramatically curtailed the rights of women and girls since they regained power. Pic: AP
Image:
The Taliban have dramatically curtailed the rights of women and girls since they regained power. Pic: AP

During those first days, I was constantly comparing our situation with Iranian women – I couldn’t find any similarity between our struggles, even though both countries can be described as having gender apartheid regimes.

In Afghanistan, women are fighting for basic human rights that we are denied, but Iranian women already appear to have them all.

afghanistan women
Image:
Women in Afghanistan. Pic: Reuters

Iranian women are suffering but I wasn’t able to see that as I am one of the millions of Afghan women who are subject to suffering, oppression, and pain.

Meeting Tranom, a young Iranian teenager, in the bathroom of a shopping mall, changed my mind.

Tranom, who was 16, had short purple hair, no hijab, and was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She told me that when she had a proper hijab, she had been arrested three times.

“It was too bad for a woman to be arrested in my society but now I’m not scared anymore. I wear what I want,” she said.

A young women films during a protest in Iran earlier in October
Image:
A young women films during a protest in Iran in October 2022

When I was in Tehran, I met Zari, a construction engineering student.

We discussed my first impressions of Iran. Zari said that the regime is mostly targeting the young generation of Iranians.

Areas that have more young people also have more trouble and tensions.

“You might have not seen the vans of Gasht-a Ershad, the Iranian morality police, in other areas but you can see one of them in [the] neighbourhood where the university is located and the parks where female and male students go,” said Zari.

Young Iranian women, especially students, are oppressed every day under the pretext that their hijab is not worn correctly, I learned from Zari.

Read more:
Women snatched from Iranian streets

Afghan families ‘let down’ by UK government
Underground protesters waging war against Iranian regime

When I travelled with my brother to Kish Island, in southern Iran, I met Fatima, a teacher who was there with her daughter and husband.

She spoke about a deep mental health crisis and depression among Iranian women.

EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran. A couple watches swimmers as they stand on the beach of Kish Island, 1,250 kilometers (777 miles) south of Tehran April 26, 2011 . REUTERS/Caren Firouz (IRAN - Tags: SOCIETY TRAVEL)
Image:
A couple watch swimmers on Kish Island. Pic: Reuters

While we were sitting on the beach of the Persian Gulf, she asked me to watch each woman who was passing in front of us.

She told me that Kish Island is one of the most expensive places in the country – many Iranians dream of visiting. The people here are the wealthy of Iran, she says.

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Meet the women living in a warzone

“When you are looking at women, you see they wear expensive clothes and they have plastic surgery and sometimes heavy make-up,” said Fatima.

“But none of them are happy because they have been oppressed by the regime. Because they are not free.”

“The fear from the morality police [is that they] never leave them alone. They all are aware of countless young women who have been arrested under the hijab pretext, and they have been raped, tortured, killed and disappeared. We all are alive but we are not living.”

Gender apartheid must be codified as a crime against humanity – let all Afghan and Iranian women live free.

On World Press Freedom Day, our contributor’s story shows there is no freedom for Afghan women

There is so much that is revealing about this young Afghan woman’s observations and comparisons with life for women in Iran.

And so much that is tragically sad too.

After more than two years of oppressive restrictions, she’s almost inured to them.

She’s horribly aware she’s lost a lot but like an old photograph, the memories of those “freedoms” are fading.

She almost casually mentions how her brother accompanies her to Iran for a “holiday” – a trip possible after obtaining a Taliban permit allowing her to go but only if she is escorted by her mahram or blood relative who acts as her chaperone (in this case, her brother).

Even beyond the country’s borders, the long arm of the Afghan Taliban stretches and curtails.

How restrictive this is for women with no male relatives or who are living with those who wield dominant control.

She observes how women in a regime considered one of the most restrictive in the world appear almost blessed compared to Afghan women.

Those in Iran have the one “freedom” cruelly denied to her and her fellow Afghan women: being able to learn.

In Afghanistan today, women cannot freely work, walk, or wear what and wherever they want.

She visits a beauty salon in Iran and is delighted to see women supporting others.

They were once female-only safe havens for Afghan women – where women sought support, comfort and exchanged ideas.

But this too was deemed unacceptable in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

They figured the salons may have been where women plotted their protest marches.

Now women spend days, weeks and months locked away in their homes, too scared, too intimidated or simply unable to leave without breaking the Taliban code.

Access to parks is restricted to certain days, the sexes segregated entirely but also the ability to talk and mix with other women has been inevitably curtailed.

The vast bulk of female journalists have had to stop work since the Taliban seized power in 2021.

Some fled the country and are in exile. Others fled underground – and write secretly and anonymously – like our contributor.

There is no World Press Freedom Day for female Afghan journalists and without media freedom, there is no freedom for Afghanistan.

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Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list

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Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list

Gaza’s health ministry has removed 1,852 people from its official list of war fatalities since October, after finding that some had died of natural causes or were alive but had been imprisoned.

The list of deaths currently stands at 50,609 following the removals. Gaza’s health ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing.

The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told Sky News that names submitted via the form had been removed as a precautionary measure pending a judicial investigation into each one.

“We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death,” Mr Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”

Others submitted via the form were found to be imprisoned or to be missing with insufficient evidence that they had died.

Some families submitting false claims, Mr Wahidi said, may have been motivated by the promise of government financial assistance.

It is the largest removal of names from the list since the war began, and comes after 1,441 names were removed between August and October – 54% of them originating in hospital morgue records rather than the online form.

chart

Mr Wahidi says his team audited the hospital data after receiving complaints from people who had ended up on the list despite being alive.

They found that hospital clerks, when operating without access to the central population registry and lacking full names or dates of birth for the dead, had marked the wrong people as dead in their records.

In total, 8% of people who were listed as dead in August have since been removed from the official death toll. Many of those may later be added back in, as the judicial investigations proceed.

‘It doesn’t look like manipulation’

Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at US thinktank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there’s no reason to think the errors are the result of deliberate manipulation intended to inflate the share of women and children among the dead.

“If 90% of the removed entries were men aged 18-40, that would look like manipulation,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like that.”

Of those entries removed since the start of the war and whose demographic information was recorded, 41% are men aged 18 to 60, while 59% are women, children and elderly people.

By comparison, 44% of remaining deaths are working-age men. This means that the removals have had the effect of slightly reducing the share of women and children in the official list.

chart

Names were previously added to the list without verification

Until October, Mr Wahidi said, names submitted via the online form had been added to the official list of registered deaths before undergoing a judicial confirmation process.

The publication of unverified deaths submitted via the form had previously led to issues with the data, with 1,295 deaths submitted via the form being removed from the list prior to October. This included 474 people who were later added back again.

Sky News previously understood that names from the form were only published after undergoing judicial confirmation. However, Mr Wahidi says this practice only began in October.

“This does cause me to downgrade the quality of the earlier lists, definitely below where I thought they were,” said Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation.

Read more:
Analysis: Gaza aid workers’ deaths
What happened to the ceasefire?

A Ministry of Health document from July 2024 confirms that names submitted through the online form were, at the time, included in the official fatality list before being verified.

These names “are initially included in the final count of martyrs, but verification procedures are undertaken afterward”, the document says.

“They basically said that they were posting these things provisionally pending investigation,” said Prof Spagat.

“There may have been literally zero people, including us, who actually absorbed this message, but they weren’t hiding it either.”

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the 7 October attack and ensuing war.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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Global markets have given Trump a clear no-confidence vote – and his fickleness is making the problem worse

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Global markets have given Trump a clear no-confidence vote - and his fickleness is making the problem worse

Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.

The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.

The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.

Tariffs latest: FTSE 100 suffers biggest daily drop since COVID

Financial investors had been gradually re-calibrating their expectations of Donald Trump over the past few months.

Hopes that his actions may not match his rhetoric were dashed on Wednesday as he imposed sweeping tariffs on the US’ trading partners, ratcheting up protectionism to a level not seen in more than a century.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a "Foreign Trade Barriers" document as he delivers remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 2, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
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On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced global tariffs, ratcheting up protectionism. Pic: Reuters

04 April 2025, Hesse, Frankfurt/Main: Stock exchange traders watch their monitors on the trading floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange while the display board with the Dax curve shows falling prices. US President Trump had issued a huge tariff package against trading partners around the world. The European Union and China have already announced countermeasures. Photo by: Arne Dedert/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
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Traders at the Frankfurt stock exchange watched the DAX plummet on Friday. Pic: Picture-alliance/dpa/AP

Markets were always going to respond to that but they are also battling with another problem: the lack of certainty when it comes to Trump.

More on Donald Trump

He is a capricious figure and we can only guess his next move. Will he row back? How far is he willing to negotiate and offer concessions?

Read more:
No winners from Trump’s tariff gameshow
Trade war sparks ‘$2.2trn’ global sell-off

These are massive unknowns, which are piled on to uncertainty about how countries will respond.

China has already retaliated and Europe has indicated it will go further.

Aerial view of a ro-ro terminal for vehicle shipment in Yantai in eastern China's Shandong province, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Chinatopix Via AP) CHINA OUT
Image:
Vehicles destined for export, like these in Yantai in eastern China, face massive US tariffs. Pic: Chinatopix/AP

Cargo containers line a shipping terminal at the Port of Oakland on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
Image:
Container ports like Oakland in California might expect activity to fall. Pic: AP

That will compound the problems for the global economy and undoubtedly send shivers through the markets.

Much is yet to be determined, but if there’s one thing markets hate, it’s uncertainty.

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Children among 19 killed in Russian attack on Zelenskyy’s home city

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Children among 19 killed in Russian attack on Zelenskyy's home city

At least 19 people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, according to Ukrainian officials.

Around 50 people were also wounded in the attack, according to emergency services, and regional governor Serhiy Lysak said more than 30, including a three-month-old baby, were in hospital.

Ukraine’s president said Friday’s attack on Kryvyi Rih showed Russia “does not want a ceasefire”.

“The whole world sees it,” said Mr Zelenskyy.

“Every missile, every strike drone proves that Russia only wants war.

“And only on the pressure of the world on Russia, on all efforts to strengthen Ukraine, our air defence, our forces – only on this does it depend when the war will end.”

Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had struck a military gathering – a statement denounced by the Ukrainian military as misinformation.

Mr Lysak wrote on the Telegram messaging app that 18 people were killed when a missile hit residential areas and sparked fires.

Later on Friday, Russian drones attacked homes and killed one person, Oleksandr Vilkul, the city’s military administrator, said.

Latest updates: President’s home city hit by missile attack

Local authorities said the missile strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

They said emergency responders were at the scene and psychologists were helping survivors.

Confirming the “high-precision strike”, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram it targeted “a meeting of unit commanders and Western instructors” in a city restaurant.

“As a result of the strike, enemy losses total up to 85 servicemen and officers of foreign countries, as well as up to 20 vehicles,” the ministry added.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says at least 14 people have died, including six children, following a Russian missile strike on Kryvyi Rih. Pic: Telegram/Zelenskiy
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Pic: Telegram/Zelenskyy

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says at least 14 people have died, including six children, following a Russian missile strike on Kryvyi Rih. Pic: Telegram/Zelenskiy
Image:
Pic: Telegram/Zelenskyy

US ‘not interested in negotiations about negotiations’

It comes after the US secretary of state issued a veiled threat to Russia as talks about a ceasefire with Ukraine continue.

Speaking in Brussels during a NATO meeting, Marco Rubio said the US was “not interested in… negotiations about negotiations”.

“We’re testing to see if the Russians are interested in peace. Their actions – not their words, their actions – will determine whether they’re serious or not, and we intend to find that out sooner rather than later,” he said.

Read more:
Israeli troops expand ‘security zone’ in northern Gaza
UK in talks with Brazil over ‘potential sale’ of warships

In March, the US agreed a proposed 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine after talks in Saudi Arabia. Later, Washington negotiated a limited ceasefire about energy infrastructure with Russia.

Since then, the warring countries have accused each other of violating the energy ceasefire.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was also in Brussels on Fridaym said Vladimir Putin “continues to obfuscate, continues to drag his feet” on ceasefire talks.

He added that while the Russian president should be accepting a ceasefire, “he continues to bombard Ukraine, its civilian population, its energy supplies”.

“We see you, Vladimir Putin. We know what you are doing,” he said.

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