Un-Justice

Australia has already lost 11 soldiers defending a government many Afghan women claim is no better than the Taliban. Sophie McNeill reports on the harsh reality of being a girl in Afghanistan.

I arrive here at Herat’s juvenile detention centre with Suraya Pakzad, a 37-year-old mother of six who is a tireless local campaigner for women’s rights. The softly spoken Suraya is firm but polite with the prison administrator, insisting that as part of her work with a local women’s NGO we must be permitted to visit the young women incarcerated here. Eventually, she convinces him to let us in.