Paris-based TV station provides a lifeline for women in Afghanistan

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/12/its-a-continuation-of-hope-paris-based-tv-station-provides-a-lifeline-for-women-in-afghanistan

‘It’s a continuation of hope’: Paris-based TV station provides a lifeline for women in Afghanistan

Begum TV beams educational and entertainment shows into homes of women living under strict Taliban rule

Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspondent
Sun 12 Jan 2025 09.48 EST

From a tiny television studio in Paris, 4,500 miles from Kabul, a raft of programmes geared towards women and presented by female hosts beams 24 hours a day into homes across Afghanistan, even as women are being steadily erased from public life in the country.

“For us, it’s a way to provide hope,” said Hamida Aman, the Afghanistan-born, Swiss-raised entrepreneur behind the satellite channel Begum TV. “For women in Afghanistan, television is their only window into the world. Especially now, when they’re confined to their homes; there are no schools, no work for them and no parks or leisure activities.”

Launched in March on International Women’s Day, the channel has seized on the surging popularity of satellite TV in Afghanistan – Aman described it as one of the most popular media in the country – to speak directly to those affected by what the UN has described as a “gender apartheid”.

Women’s rights and freedoms have dramatically worsened since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. In early December, the group reportedly barred women from training as nurses and midwives, essentially closing off one of the last remaining paths through which women in the country had access to further education.

By day, Begum TV offers school classes in Dari and Pashto at various grade levels, offering girls banned from schools a chance to study, while in the evening it transmits a roster of programmes that range from light entertainment to those that address women’s rights and field questions on medical issues and mental health.

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