Farahnaz Forotan

Farahnaz Forotan (, born 9 August 1992) is an Afghan female journalist. She moved to Iran together with her family during Mujahidden regime Forotan returned back to Afghanistan in 2001 and took refuge in France in 2020 after being included in a Taliban's hit list.

Early life
In 1996, when Farahnaz was three and the Taliban arrived in her home town, Kabul, she and her family migrated to Iran due to the civil war in Afghanistan. Farahnaz and her sisters were denied from education by the authorities due to their immigrant or refugee status. She was able to continue school from grades one through four, in a private Afghan School called "Sayyed Jamaluddin Afghan" with very limited funding, staff, and facilities.

Career
Farahnaz was passionate about working with media and began working with a private television in Kabul, Afghanistan, "Norren TV" at that very young age. She continued working for the same station for two consecutive years. She has traveled around the country and abroad to correspond to Afghanistan related stories, Farahnaz is the first female journalist that reported from Sangeen district of Helmand, a dangerous war zone and haven of the Taliban.

She first rose to fame with an investigative documentary on the lives of Taliban prisoners, which dissected their thought-process and their reasons behind targeting the Afghan and international forces, along with that of the general public in Afghanistan. As the prisoners assertively spoke about how each had gotten to their specified cells, from the very first moments into being propagated, their lives in prison was observed in order to secure their human rights, while in prison.

Farahnaz Forotan is working with Ariana Television Network and she is a student of private university in Kabul, Afghanistan. She was awarded 'Journalist in the country by Afghanistan's Free Media Association in 2015. She is the youngest female journalist in the country to have been a recipient of the highest national Afghan award from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's government, at the age of twenty-three.

During the Afghan peace process, in 2020, Forotan started a social media campaign and travelling the country collecting women testimonies to prevent Talibans from using the peace talks to roll back women freedoms acquired in recent years since the fall of the Taliban. The testimonies were used to lobby Afghan leaders, foreign diplomats and civil society groups, and Forotan’s campaign had the backing of UN Women Afghanistan.

On 9 November 2020, Farahnaz received a call from the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee, which informed her that according to their information, obtained by foreign intelligence services, she was included on the Taliban's blacklist of people and that she could be killed soon, which forced her to flee and take refuge in Paris, France.