Zahra Joya is an Afghan journalist and one of TIME’s 2022 Women of the Year. In 2020, Zahra founded Rukhshana Media, a women-led news organisation covering women’s issues in Afghanistan. In August 2021, Zahra fled to Britain after the fall of Kabul and now manages Rukhshana Media from her home in London. Rukhshana Media covers Afghan women’s issues inside and outside of Afghanistan, publishing in Persian and English. On the one-year anniversary of the fall of Afghanistan, Rukhshana Media, in cooperation with Time and Pulitzer centre, published special stories of Afghan women, and for the first time, two female afghan pilots who became refugees were featured on the cover of Times Magazine.
Zahra has also received the freedom of expression award from the city of Valencia, Spain, and the change maker award from the Bill Gates Foundation. Rukhshana Media was chosen for the 2022 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism and also awarded the Marie Colvin Award 2021, a British Journalism Award that recognizes bravery in reporting. Rukhshana Media awarded the Foreign Press 2022 award from the Foreign Press Correspondents Association and Club U.S