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Written By: Hakim Bigzaad

The United Nations Womens Division released a shocking report on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, stating that in the year 2022, a staggering 48,800 women worldwide were killed by their partners and close relatives.

This organization released this report on November 22nd, before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

According to this report, 48,800 women have been killed by their intimate partners and family members, including fathers, mothers, brothers, and uncles.

The heart of this report reveals that 133 women or girls are killed by their family members and loved ones worldwide.

The highest number of gender-related killings in 2022 underscores that the world has fallen short in preventing such events.

Femicide: A Global Challenge

Femicide, or gender-related killings, like all forms of violence against women and girls, is a serious issue that has impacted countries worldwide.

According to a United Nations report, the continent of Africa recorded the highest number of female and girl homicides in 2022, with a figure reaching 20,000 women in one year. Following that, Asia documented 18,400 cases, the Americas reported 7,900 cases, Europe recorded 2,300 cases, and Oceania documented 200 cases of female and girl homicides.

The Scale of Femicide Likely Higher than UN Figures

The United Nations Womens Division has emphasized that while the figures mentioned for each continent reveal a staggering number of femicides, it is likely just the tip of the iceberg.

According to this report, a significant number of femicide or gender-related killing victims remain uncounted. The organization attributes this challenge to national variations and research methodologies.

The UN report highlights that certain groups of women and girls are at greater risk. It emphasizes that women in the public eye, such as women politicians, human rights defenders, and journalists, face both offline and online threats that often lead to their killings.

It is worth noting that Afghanistan is recognized as one of the worst places for women, as the rise of the Taliban administration has turned it into a perilous place, resulting in the near destruction of womens achievements over the past 20 years.

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Nearly 5,000 women killed by relatives in Afghanistan in 2022: UN ... - The Khaama Press News Agency

He was born Mohammed Sadiq Habibi in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar in 1935 a time, he says, when Kandahar had one doctor and two homeopaths. The conservative Habibi family was well known. Seven generations of its men before him had trained as Islamic scholars, known as Mawlawis.

But his father, Mawlawi Mohammed Rafiq Habibi, was a conflicted man.

Although he had studied as a religious scholar, he worked as a bank clerk and was for years the Afghan state banks representative in Karachi, which was then a port city in undivided India. He dressed in suits and ties and was open to debating theological questions with his son about the existence of God.

It was his mother, though, who opened new worlds for him.

Some of his earliest memories involve listening to his mother, Bibi Hazrata, and other women of the family in Arghandab, a district of pomegranates and vineyards, as they sang folk songs at weddings and family gatherings. His mother was also his early interpreter of poetic verse. She did not have formal schooling, but classical poetry in those times was a pillar of education in the mosque and at home.

My mother had a lot of interest in poetry, and knew the meanings well, he said.

One of the first recordings he made, years later, for Radio Afghanistan was of a Pashto folk song he had heard as a child, which his mother helped him understand. On a bus ride from Kandahar to Karachi, the conductor softly sang the song.

I am going to visit my beloved today

May God shorten these earthly ropes.

The boy tugged at his mother and asked what earthly ropes meant. She described God as a puppet master of sorts, sitting in the heavens.

All these distances in the world the threads, the ropes are in Gods hand, she told him. Whenever he wants to connect the lover with the beloved, brother with brother, husband with wife, he pulls the strings and the distances disappear.

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The Artistry of Nashenas Speaks to the Afghanistan He Had to Leave Behind - The New York Times

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

This month, in collaboration with The New Yorker, the ProPublica Films team published an animated documentary called The Night Doctrine. The film follows the investigative journey of reporter Lynzy Billing as she pieces together what happened to her own family members when they were murdered in Afghanistan 30 years ago. During her reporting, Billing began to learn of a series of other killings of Afghan civilians committed by the Zero Units, elite Afghan special forces groups backed by the U.S. That investigation, called The Night Raids, was published late last year.

The accompanying film weaves together Billings personal story, the recent history of Afghanistan and the hauntingly recurrent nightly raids carried out by the Zero Units. I spoke with ProPublica visual journalist Mauricio Rodrguez Pons about the production of The Night Doctrine, which has so far been selected for screening by more than a dozen film festivals, including the Tribeca Film Festival, HollyShorts, the New Hampshire Film Festival and BIAF, among others. It is an incredible feat of animated journalism, and I encourage you to watch the 16-minute piece on our site or on YouTube. Now, on to the discussion, which has been edited for clarity and length.

Watch The Night Doctrine

In the beginning, our plan was to create a three-minute video explainer. But when we started to work at the beginning with video that Lynzy [Billing] and another photographer, Kern Hendricks, took in Afghanistan, we saw the potential to create the story around it. Then we decided, OK, lets do a nine-minute animated video about a single raid through the perspectives of a family and a soldier. And as we kept working with Lynzy, and with Tracy [Weber, ProPublica managing editor], and with Almudena Toral, ProPublicas executive producer and co-director of the film, we discovered that Lynzys story was really, really hard and really connected with the families, the Zero Units and the story of Afghanistan itself. So we started asking questions: What if we created a film that connects the three stories into one while trying to explain what happened in Afghanistan?

Part of the style of the film is the idea that everything is connected. Its like an infinite journey. We wanted to create a journey that never ends mimicking Afghanistans cycle of violence, loss and no accountability.

A phrase that we wrote on a storyboard is infinite nightmare, and we asked ourselves how we can represent that. I came up with this idea of creating an infinite sequence that connects with each sequence, and the whole film is like a connection. Its like youre always navigating the stories and the journey. I mean, Lynzys journey and Afghanistans journey is at the end of the day the same, right?

Of course, the night is kind of the main thing here. In the night, the darkness is important. We wanted to again create that infinite nightmare and the mood, the colors, everything is connected with the night, the shadows, the blue color is also kind of like a nightmare. Everything was driven by that idea.

From the technical perspective, its hard to create differences in black.Thats why we wanted some light elements present like the candle at the beginning that the little kid has next to his bed, and the lanterns, and the lights of a car.

The security of our sources was important for us. And the access was impossible especially after the Taliban took over Afghanistan again. We also really wanted to add some elements to communicate that this is a true story. And thats why we decided to add real footage elements.

For example, the image that everybody saw when the United States left Afghanistan was that plane so we wanted to use that to remind people: Remember this image? These are the stories that were around that image you saw. And at the end we show the main characters of the piece in their actual, modern environment. Its to give some kind of truth; that this is a true story. Its not just a fiction animated piece. We didnt invent this.

I think the animation gives you the power not just to fill the gaps, but to fill the gaps creatively. That creativity, that freedom that the animation gives you, allows you to present not just the facts but also the sentiments that people felt. Its something that not only animation can do, but its also kind of like its main role. Especially here in ProPublica, a place where we really care about facts, and with what happened and what didnt happen, animation is a powerful tool to represent not just what happened with the families but to represent how the families felt and how Lynzy felt.

The Night Raids

The main inspiration for me came from a soundtrack that Milad Yousufi, the musician we worked with, shared with me. It was like a soundtrack of Afghan old movies and the instruments include the main instruments, the rabab and piano, we used in the film. It was really, really dark. And I played that all day for days. I dont remember how many months; maybe eight months. I would work with that music on and kind of allowed myself to feel that darkness and the suffering of the story, of the Afghan people. I mean, how many families suffered there? For me, thats the main thing. It's the main inspiration.

I hope viewers take away the story, and I hope they think about what the United States is doing in places like Afghanistan, and about accountability. Like Lynzy said in the film, it happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Vietnam, it happened in Iraq. Thats why I said at the beginning that this is a never-ending story. You just cant imagine all the sad stories that are destroying families right now. I guess I just want people to consider the families that are affected. Thats the intention of the film. Thats what we wanted to represent. And I hope we can put another voice out there to try to make change.

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How We Made the Animated Documentary The Night Doctrine - ProPublica

Hundreds of new medals -- including Distinguished Flying Crosses and Bronze Stars -- are being given to airmen who helped with the 2021 evacuation of Afghanistan, and more awards are on the horizon.

The latest awards include a total of 229 Air Medals, 98 Meritorious Service Medals, eight Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Bronze Star Medals and are for "maintainers, loadmasters, Raven-trained security forces, aeromedical evacuation personnel and pilots" involved with one of the largest humanitarian evacuation efforts in military history, the Air Force's Air Mobility Command announced Wednesday.

"It is with great humility, gratitude and honor that I have the opportunity to recognize the actions of these mobility heroes," Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said in a statement. "This recognition is long overdue, but I hope everyone involved in this incredible operation knows our deepest appreciation for their sacrifice while saving more than 124,000 American and Afghan lives."

Read Next: Pulling Close-Air Support Airmen from Army Bases Would Increase Risk on the Battlefield, Republicans in Congress Say

Air Mobility Command played a crucial role in the evacuation, from loading up the first evacuee to boarding the last American soldier onto the final C-17 Globemaster III from Kabul on Aug. 30, 2021. More than 124,000 people ranging from government employees to Afghan refugees were flown to safety as more than two decades of U.S. military involvement in the country was left behind.

That military-led evacuation also came at a major cost. When a suicide bomber struck at the Kabul airport's Abbey Gate during the rescue mission on Aug. 26, 13 troops -- 11 Marines, a sailor and a soldier -- were killed, marking the final American casualties of the war in Afghanistan. More than 20 other troops were wounded, and about 170 Afghans were killed.

"Airmen proved, once again, that they can make the impossible possible," Minihan said. "But it came with great personal sacrifice and risk."

The latest announcement of medals connected to the mission, known as Operation Allies Refuge, marks the sixth awards board related to the evacuation. Last year, Air Mobility Command announced 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 12 Bronze Star Medals and a Gallant Unit Citation for the 621st Contingency Response Group.

More recognition is on the way for airmen involved with the operation, too. A seventh awards board is scheduled for Air Mobility Command next week.

In late August, on the two-year anniversary marking the chaos of the Afghanistan exit, the Pentagon announced that many of the Marine Corps and Army units involved in the effort would be honored with a Presidential Unit Citation, the highest distinction that a military unit can receive.

Members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central Command, and Joint Task Force 82 of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division were recognized with the citation for their efforts during Operation Allies Refuge.

Besides the Army and Marine Corps units, elements of 20 other units, including active-duty and National Guard troops, were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.

Minihan told reporters during a media roundtable at the Air and Space Force Association's conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in September that he was also fighting for airmen involved to be honored with a Presidential Unit Citation.

"With a lot of hard work, there's been some exceptional recognition, including individually and in units, but it is not at all where I want it to be," Minihan said in response to a Military.com question. "So, there is lots of work that remains on units and individuals, including the Presidential Unit Citations ... but what I intend moving forward is to take those units, those individuals, and sponsor those all the way up."

Some of the latest awards will be given at a private ceremony during the 2023 Airlift/Tanker Association Convention in Grapevine, Texas, this week.

"We continue to reveal incredible actions taken to carry out this mission, and it is our duty to recognize each and every one of them," Minihan said.

-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.

Related: Air Force General Fighting to Get Airmen Presidential Unit Citation for Afghanistan Evacuation

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Hundreds of Airmen Will Receive New Medals for 2021 Afghanistan Evacuation - Military.com

On October 7, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck western Herat Province in Afghanistan, claiming thousands of lives, flattening entire villages, and leaving communities to live in tent cities after losing their homes. In the days that followed, two more devastating earthquakes hit the region, deepening the severity of this crisis along with multiple challenges the people of Afghanistan were already facing.

Over the last two years, the number of people across Afghanistan in need of humanitarian assistance has increased to 67% of the population. Three consecutive years of drought, spiking costs of basic necessities, and reductions in international funding have pushed millions of Afghans living on the edge further into crisis.

It is imperative that international attention and funds be urgently directed to this crisis, says Dayne Curry, Mercy Corps Country Director for Afghanistan. The support committed to the response thus far is simply not enough to address the long recovery ahead or prepare communities for potential future shocks.

Mercy Corps is responding to the recent earthquakes, working to address the urgent water and sanitation needs of earthquake-affected communities. Our team in Herat is providing clean water, sanitation kits, and cash assistance to help communities rebuild and recover.

Mercy Corps has worked alongside communities in Afghanistan since 1986, growing access to clean water and sanitation services as well as connecting people to agricultural and vocational training. In 2023, we reached more than 96,600 people across the country.

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The crisis in Afghanistan after series of devastating earthquakes - Mercy Corps