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Profile: Yusra Hussain

 

“I can leave a question mark with them. Girls should question things”

 

Yusra Hussain is the founder of 'Agahee Pakistan' a grassroots organization providing social enterprise services to marginalized communities, especially women and young people. She is dedicated to empowering other women and raising their awareness about sexual and reproductive health and rights.

“It has been an interesting journey for me,” Yusra says.

She got married in 2016 after finishing her university studies, but quickly realized she was in an abusive relationship. “Within a week of being in my relationship,” she says, “there were things happening that I could see were not right.”

Yusra made excuses for her husband and gave him the benefit of the doubt again and again, hoping the cycle of violence would end. “Violence is not always physical,” she explains. “I was traumatized emotionally and abused verbally and financially. It wore me down, and it took years for me to come out of the trauma.”

 

“Violence is not always physical. I was traumatized emotionally and abused verbally and financially. It wore me down, and it took years for me to come out of the trauma.”

 

Yusra says that domestic violence is normalized in Pakistan and needs to be addressed. When she was suffering abuse, finding help was not easy. “I was looking out for support,” she recalls. “I wanted to reach out to people who could help me or hear me out or just give me, you know, suggestions on what to do next because nothing made sense to me at that time.”

Not only was she living with violence in her home, but the wider culture in Pakistan made it difficult to report the situation. “There were many organizations worldwide dealing with domestic violence,” she says. “Whenever I texted or emailed them they told me that they couldn’t help me because they were not in Pakistan, and so I should try and reach out to a local organization.” Despite her search for help, Yusra was not able to find protection services in her community.

“I was not happy and the abuse kept on happening,” she remembers. “I was found unconscious in my office one day. My ex’s family had forbidden me to eat anything the day before, so I was functioning on no food. The constant abuse resulted in a minor mental breakdown.”

In the end, Yusra returned to her father’s home and never saw her husband again. She began a new life, one devoted to ending violence against women in Pakistan. “There’s a social stigma about violence,” she says. “We were all seeing it, but nobody was doing anything about it. And then it happened to me.”

 

“There’s a social stigma about violence. We were all seeing it, but nobody was doing anything about it. And then it happened to me.”

 

Yusra realized that she could be part of opening up a conversation about violence and help to build a network of support for women and girls who were experiencing abuse: “I’d been thinking about doing something and then it clicked. I realized I should start an organization where I could do something for women.”

She put together a proposal on how to conduct a training session to raise awareness about abuse and harassment, and how to get out of these situations. Yusra says that her approach was inclusive, as it was aimed at both girls and boys. “Boys need to know how to actually dismantle the patriarchal society and how it is going to benefit them,” she explains.

She went on to set up an organization called 'Agahee,' which means “awareness” in Urdu and is an acronym for “Aware Girls about Abuse, Harassment and Equal Empowerment”.

 

 

Yusra prepared sessions and made plans with her former high school to begin work as an advocate for the rights of girls. However, she did not receive a warm welcome from everyone, despite the lessons being scheduled in advance; she says that the principal tried to brush her off, and then limited her time talking to the students to just 30 minutes to talk with the students.

“When I was sitting with the girls and when I started talking I could see the yearning in their eyes,” Yusra says. “They wanted to know more.” Yusra gave the girls information about how to get help and find people to talk to. “They wanted to talk more about street harassment,” she explains. “They wanted to talk more about harassment in their communities and all the things that they go through in their own houses.”

Yusra says that the girls were relieved that someone was speaking to them about social issues instead of purely academic subjects. “I knew that I would have more opportunities, because when I looked at those girls I could just tell. And by the time I got home there were dozens of messages on my Instagram account.”

 

“When I was sitting with the girls and when I started talking I could see the yearning in their eyes,They wanted to talk more about street harassment. They wanted to talk more about harassment in their communities and all the things that they go through in their own houses.”

 

Since then, Yusra and her sister have teamed up to make 'Agahee' a catalyst for girls in Pakistan to talk openly about what they are going through and how to change it. “When I go to a school or a university, or anywhere in the community, I talk to young girls and then they go back to their homes and question things after the training. This should happen, because this is how we’ll make change.”

But Yusra points out that progress is not always a straight line, and she knows that girls do not often get the responses they hope for when they raise the issue of gender-based violence at home. “They received responses like, ‘What are they teaching you in this school? What sort of questions are you asking me? I’ll talk to the headmistress in your school. I’ll talk to a teacher! What are they doing to our girls?’”

Yusra has found that this rigid resistance to new ideas is deeply ingrained in the older generation. Therefore, she says, “I am targeting young people because I can mould their minds.”

Yusra juggles dozens of conversations and cases through her online chats. She is chatting with a girl whose family keeps her in a room after school and just wants to marry her off. Yusra says that the family does not care if she enters into an abusive or violent marriage. “This is what patriarchy looks like in our society and it is shameful.”

 

“This is what patriarchy looks like in
our society and it is shameful.”

 

Yusra explains that, in each session, Agahee is planting seeds that will take time to reach fruition. “I know it’s not going to be a very quick process,” she says. “It’s going to take years and years, and I may not even live to see the change.” Yusra is motivated by the idea that she leaves the girls to begin their own journey of asking questions: “At least there should be a question. In some I can leave a question mark with them. Girls should question things.”

Yusra and her sister started running more awareness-raising sessions with students and started getting the message out there. They host “open mics” where people can share monologues about their experiences as survivors, allies and advocates. “We create a safe space for them where they can talk,” she says. “Nobody judges anyone and we will just talk. There are housewives who are going through stuff. They can’t talk to their immediate family.”

After years of listening and sharing, Yusra has distilled some of her learning into structured lesson plans on gender-based violence that can be integrated into the national education curriculum. She says that the project is proceeding but that getting approval takes time.

 

“We create a safe space for them where they can talk. Nobody judges anyone and we will just talk. There are housewives who are going through stuff. They can’t talk to their immediate family.”

 

In the meantime, she tries to keep the sessions small, for groups of 10 to 16 people, so that the girls feel comfortable. At this rate, progress is slow: “It’s very challenging every time, because there are so many schools. There are so many people who still need to know more about the issues.”

As Yusra continues to advocate for change, she sometimes experiences strong resistance and even threats: “I have received a call from someone I know who said, ‘I know this person and he wants you to stop doing what you are doing.’” She now takes these threats in her stride and views them as part of being an activist pushing against a hostile patriarchal power structure. “How is it going to stop me?” she asks. “I cannot stop doing what has become the ambition of my life.”

 

 

While Yusra sees progress in the communities where she engages with young people, there is much more to do in rural areas. “In small villages, nobody speaks up,” Yusra reports. “Women and girls get raped and even their mothers say, ‘Just keep quiet. It’s fine – just go out, and don’t tell anybody that you got raped.’ There are so many things that are still not reported.”

Yusra has had to suspend the in-person sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this has allowed her to focus on refinancing, new materials and maintaining her exchanges with hundreds of women across the country.

 

"I have seen women in Peshawar and Karachi and in the most remote areas coming out to the streets and chanting and protesting about their rights.”

 

“I have received messages from women saying that my story has inspired them to make a decision for themselves. And now they have taken steps to get out of an abusive relationship,” she says. “Sometimes it makes me happy that I made the decision to share my story with the world because I know it has helped many people to make their decision,” she adds. “And it really keeps me going, the fact that in a span of just four or five years I have seen people in Pakistan talking about sexual and reproductive health. I have seen women in Peshawar and Karachi and in the most remote areas coming out to the streets and chanting and protesting about their rights.”

 

Learn more

 

My Body is My Body, My Life is My Life: Sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in Asia and the Pacific

International Technical and Programmatic Guidance on Out-of-School Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE)

My Body is My Own: Claiming the right to autonomy and self-determination

Project Agahee

 


Yusra attended the Nairobi Summit to mark the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in 2019. She was able to learn from some of the world’s most inspiring gender equality activists at the event.

She and her sister have organized awareness sessions and multiple opportunities to enable women to speak up about gender-based violence throughout Pakistan. They are committed to sharing experiences with peers by publishing articles on issues related to gender and patriarchal oppression. Yusra has been recognized for her contributions and she received a SATHA Innovation Award in 2018.