Feminist Activism through Girl* Up Edinburgh: Amplifying the Voices of Afghan Women

Thulsa Miqdhaadh Moosa, current President for Girl* Up Edinburgh, takes stock of how the organisatiom platforms and amplifies voices with personal experience and engagement, reflecting on a panel on Afghan women leading change.

When I ran for Girl* Up Edinburgh’s Vice President role as a fresher back in 2022, I never could have imagined just how empowering and rewarding being a part of the Girl* Up Edinburgh community would be. Three years later, here I am, currently serving as President and reflecting on the incredible journey it has been. Whilst I could go on for ages about the amazing initiatives and experiences that I have had the opportunity to be a part of in my journey leading Girl* Up — I would like to draw particularly on a panel we held in January 2025, which was centred on amplifying the voices and experiences of Afghan women. 

Being a team of feminists that exist as a part of a wider coalition of feminist societies (the global Girl Up alliance), it is integral that we centre the importance of collective activism and recognition beyond just the gendered implications of issues here at Edinburgh. A key aspect to our engagements with feminist activism, is reiterating the idea that our aims to achieve justice is one that should encompass justice for all. Fighting for gender equality, embodies equality for everyone. Fighting for liberation from coercive patriarchal structures involves recognising that these structures exist in heterogenous forms across communities. Fighting for change must incorporate considerations towards the implications of certain actions and movements on everyone, and not just the select few. 

This brings me to when a fellow final year undergraduate student, Rosie, reached out to Girl* Up late in semester one of this academic year. She reached out because of her passion towards raising awareness of the escalating levels of gender persecution taking place in Afghanistan currently, and her determination to find a platform to shed light on the situation. I took on the initiative to work alongside Rosie, to make her idea into a reality. It filled me with pride that she saw Girl* Up as a platform to mobilise, to speak to the situation in Afghanistan — because this is exactly what our society aims to achieve. Girl* Up is not just creating spaces for consciousness-raising, collective solidarity and meaningful discussion about what it happening around the world, but to effectively utilise our platform to elevate the voices and stories of those who rightfully deserve it. That is what feminism is to me. I believe that it is all about learning and relearning. It is about listening and understanding. It is about taking that step back, and realising that we should speaking “with” and not “about”. 

So in the context of Afghanistan, despite the importance of using Girl* Up’s educational feminist activist space to cultivate discussions and engage with the situation in Afghanistan from a distance — it is by amplifying the voices of Afghan women themselves that we can better understand how best to support the people being impacted. Our own research, media coverage and awareness alone are unable to provide us with sufficient exposure to the intricacies of the situation, and hence we reached out to our incredible panelists, Sara Wahedi, Karishma Koofi, and Salomé Robbert Prieto from the brilliant Netwomening team. Sara and Karishma as Afghan women, and Salomé as a board member of a non-governmental organisation that works to support Afghan women refugees and their reintegration into society were all able to provide us with unique perspectives on the situation, with greater experience and engagement in relation to their positionalities. 

When the day of the panel finally arrived, whilst it was fulfilling to see how our efforts had paid off after successfully dispensing 150 tickets and putting on a successful panel. I was struck by how incredibly impactful the experiences and stories we had the privilege of listening to were. It was insightful to learn about the panelists’ work in creating revolutionary apps, platforms and communities, to working with international legislative bodies to navigate bringing a sense of justice for Afghan women, to the experience of becoming a refugee, to the successes and barriers of entrepreneurship, and what effective support for Afghan women and displaced people encompasses. I felt as though this panel truly encompassed what I feel like Girl* Up and feminist activism is in a nutshell. It symbolised the power of change through connections and story-telling. I hope that even after I graduate, Girl* Up can continue to be this space for empowerment, education and change, and I encourage anyone who is reading and willing to try involving themselves in similar endeavours — to take the leap! Join that society, reach out, try out for that position, and just give it your best shot as you will never know where that can take you. I wish you all the best, and I believe in you! 

Author Bio:

Tulsa Miqdhaadh Moosa (she/her) is the current President for Girl* Up and final-year MA International Relations and International Law Student at The University of Edinburgh. She is passionate about advocating for gender equality and intersectional feminism, and hopes to pursue a career in the humanitarian field after she graduates.