Afghan women are facing hard times again. Since the Taliban Regime took back the power, they are forced to cover themselves from head to toe. The imposition of burqa is a law that should be followed by every woman. Anyone who doesn't should be punished.

We think this kind of imposition is not acceptable in the 21st century. So, our goal was to create awareness on Afghan women's rights.

We created a dress made of Afghan burqas which were abandoned by Afghan women at the airport when they left the country. We turned a symbol of oppression into a symbol of freedom.

The dress was designed by Katty Xiomara, a Portuguese fashion designer, in a collaboration with Zarifa Ghafari, an Afghan Human Rights Activist and former Mayor in Afghanistan.

Zarifa was the first to wear the dress when she was at the European Parliament. After that, many other women wore the dress and spread the message through social media. The project highlighted on main Portuguese TV channels, fashion magazines such as Vogue, newspapers, websites an through social media.

During the time of the campaign, the searches for "burqa", "afghan burqa", "freedom burqa" increased, reaching its highest point on Women's Day.

Also through our web-listening tool (Brandwatch) we confirmed an increased interest on the theme, mainly through some keywords - "Zarifa Ghafari", "Look for Freedom", "Amnesty" and "Women's Rights".

This data confirms that there was a growing interest on this issue, that contributed itself for a change in behaviour.

This was not only an awareness campaign. Anyone could sign a petition in the website with the aim of criminalising the war of Talibans against women. Almost 4000 people already sign the petition, and it's still on going.

Earned Media: 650.000€

Over 1.700.000 people reached with 0€ spent

Increase of 60% of searches/interest on the issue vs. 2023