Shabana Basij Rasikh, Afghan activist: “My family took a risk and sent me to a secret school dressed as a boy”

Shabana Basij Rasikh (Kabul, 33 years old) can't keep talking. While visiting Madrid, where she has just received the Unicef Spain 2023 award, the passion with which she describes her work at the head of the School of Leadership in Afghanistan (SOLA) is suspended for a few seconds by the tears that begin to flow from her eyes. She, who dressed as a child in the nineties so that she could walk down the street with her sister and attend a secret s…