NO WOMAN'S LAND: An Intimate Look into the Battle for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan

The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to the condition of women and girls in Afghanistan following the return of the Taliban to power in August 2021. The Award was granted to the reporting project proposed by the duo of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and French researcher Mélissa Cornet, which was produced over a six-month period with the support of the Fondation Carmignac.

The laureates has been officially announced and their work unveiled at the Visa pour l’Image festival on September 5, 2024.

Over the course of the last six months, Kiana and Mélissa travelled to seven provinces in Afghanistan to investigate the conditions imposed on women and girls by the Taliban, which, according to Amnesty International’s research, could constitute a possible crime against humanity of gender-based persecution. They met with more than 100 women and girls, barred from going to school, forced to stay at home, women journalists and activists continuing to fight for their rights, mothers watching with horror as history repeats itself for their daughters, as well as LGBTQI+ individuals. They documented how the Taliban, allowed by a deeply patriarchal society, have systematically erased women from society, taking away their most basic rights: to go to school, to university, to work, to travel, to dress as they wish, to go to public baths, to parks, or even to the beauty salon.

The starkest change that Kiana and Mélissa noted since August 2021 was the general loss of hope among women that things might improve for them, as dreams of having an education and becoming members of society were shattered before them, becoming the primary victims of recurring economic and food crises, and a health system that has all but collapsed. In the words of one women’s rights activist, who has since left the country, seeing no future for herself in Afghanistan: « We have forgotten joy, we don’t know from where any can be found. I’ve lost all motivation. I cry alone, hidden. It’s as if someone has locked me in a room and won’t let me outside. Even food has no taste. »

Kiana and Mélissa used different media to document this highly sensitive situation, including photographs, sketches, and videos, but also art created collaboratively with Afghan teenage girls.

From 25 October in Paris at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers, you can discover the NO WOMAN'S LAND exhibition, devoted to this major new report.

The laureates

Kiana Hayeri (b.1988) grew up in Tehran, Iran and moved to Toronto while she was still a teenager. Faced with the challenges of adapting to a new environment, she took up photography as a way of bridging the gap in language and culture. In 2014, a short month before NATO forces pulled out, Kiana moved to Kabul and stayed on for 8 years. Her work often explores complex topics such as migration, adolescence, identity and sexuality in conflict-ridden societies.

In 2020, Kiana received the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award for her proposed project to reveal the dangers of dilettante “hit & run” journalism. Later that year, she was named as the 6th recipient of the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting. In 2021, Kiana received the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal for her photographic series “Where Prison is Kind of a Freedom,” documenting the lives of Afghan women in Herat Prison. In 2022, Kiana was part of The New York Times reporting team that won The Hal Boyle Award for “The Collapse of Afghanistan” and was shortlisted under International Reporting for the Pulitzer Prize. In the same year, she was also named as the winner of Leica Oskar Barnack Award for her portfolio, “Promises Written On the Ice, Left In the Sun”, an intimate look into the lives of Afghan from all walks of life. In 2024, Kiana published a photobook “When Cages Fly”, was selected in the Joop Swart Masterclass and was selected as laureate of the 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Award with Mélissa Cornet.

Kiana Hayeri is a Senior TED fellow, a National Geographic Explorer grantee and a regular contributor to The New York Times and National Geographic. She is currently based out of Sarajevo, telling stories from Afghanistan, the Balkans and beyond.

Website: www.kianahayeri.com
Instagram: @kianahayeri

Mélissa Cornet is a women’s rights researcher who has been living and working in Afghanistan since January 2018. Prior to the fall of Kabul, she researched women’s economic empowerment, their involvement in elections, in the peace process, violence against women, among other topics. Mélissa stayed after August 2021, continuing to travel to a dozen provinces for her research, offering a unique perspective from inside the country on the degrading situation of the rights of Afghan women and girls. Since then, she has continued working on women’s rights under the Taliban, publishing papers on the impact of the food crisis on women and girls, on how to include women in aid delivery, on the mental health situation of women aid workers, and on women’s economic empowerment programs in a country where they are no longer allowed to study or move without a chaperon.

She is a cited expert on the issue of women’s rights in the country, and has been interviewed by media outlets including The Guardian, BBC, VOA, The Times and Frontline, as well as numerous French newspapers. She has appeared on ABC News, MSNBC, France 24, BFM TV, or Arte, and has been a guest speaker for events at the House of Commons and at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

She was named laureate with Kiana Hayeri on the 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Award in 2024.

Website: www.melissacornet.org
Instagram: @melissacrt