Shabana Basij-Rasikh

But now, in the absence of any prosecutions, a group of women are pursuing their own civil action.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh set up a school for her fellow Afghan women when she was only a teenager.

Now in her thirties, with the Taliban back in power in her home country, she's managed to relocate the boarding school and its students to Rwanda so they can continue their education, and she set up a postgraduate scholarship at Oxford University.

Shabana will be telling us her powerful story.

Now, as a Woman's Hour presenter, I am privileged to meet so many women who work toward making a difference to their community.

But still, once in a while, you come across someone who is simply quite remarkable in their efforts and impact.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh is a leading advocate for girls' edu- education in Afghanistan, where according to the UN, about 2.4 million girls are excluded from secondary education and conditions for all Afghan women and girls have continued to deteriorate.

Back in 2008 when she was just 18 years old, Shabana co-founded SOLA, that's the School of Leadership Afghanistan, a boarding school for girls in Kabul.

So I think standing up against that normalization.

Just yesterday, a young Afghan, uh, woman educator, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, was recognized as one of, uh, TIME's 100 Next.

Um, so there are a lot of incredible young Afghans around the world, uh, themselves refugees, themselves in, you know, in legal limbo sometimes, including in the US, supporting communities back home, supporting initiatives back home, and you can reach out and support them.

Fantastic.

And to this day, I carry those flames with me and it really fuels everything we do today.

But the reason I burned the records of our students was several months before that day, I had a father of one of our students come to my office.

And his daughter was the only girl in his entire village who was going to school.

And she was a student at our boarding school.

And I was so taken by his determination to advocate for yet another daughter.

And yet, doing all of that at enormous risk.

I'm really glad you mentioned that father, Shobana, because there is a sense, I think, outside of Afghanistan that it's girls and women versus the men of the Taliban.

But there are people like that man, that father, who want their daughters to grow and evolve as humans.