A PhD student at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, a South Asian social activist helping refugees – particularly women and girls – in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, the co-founder of a Canadian non-profit organisation: these are the many hats that Farhana Rahman has chosen to wear.
Farhana spent the first years of her life in Zambia where her father was employed. As a child, she travelled extensively with her family to several countries, thus benefitting from an extended classroom experience punctuated with lessons from diverse cultures and ways of life. Along with her three sisters, the devout Muslim family moved to Canada when Farhana was twelve. She completed middle and secondary school in Toronto, as well as an Honours BA in Peace and Conflict Studies, International Relations, and Arabic from the University of Toronto. Farhana credits her parents with encouraging their daughters’ education and love of learning, but with a feeling of responsibility for community participation.
Farhana’s Cambridge PhD thesis examines the effect of conflict and forced migration on Rohingya women and how gender roles and relations have been transformed since their flight from Myanmar and displacement to refugee camps in Bangladesh. Farhana, as an ethnic Bangladeshi, has used her nationality and language ability to immerse herself in the day-to-day life of these displaced women, to learn how they have adjusted to their surroundings. Although more than two years have passed, and despite international efforts, there seems little hope that the Rohingya will soon be able to return to Myanmar. Refugee camps at Cox’s Bazaar have swelled from an initial establishment of 700,000 to become closer to one million.
Besides her academic studies, Farhana has been continuously involved in gender-related projects. In 2015, she helped start the first academic program in gender studies in Afghanistan, based at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. She co-founded an NGO, Silkpath Relief Organization (silkpathrelief.org), that operates in Afghanistan and with Rohingya refugee communities in Bangladesh and Malaysia. She returns to these countries regularly, thus remaining engaged with the communities where she has nurtured strong ties. Farhana also regularly works as a consultant offering technical expertise and training on gender equality, social policy, and human rights for various projects in South Asia and Africa.
Farhana’s plan is to submit her thesis by July 2020. She couples her academic life with visits every few months to the Rohingya refugee camps to continue supporting refugees and to close the research-participant feedback loop. She believes that Canada has been at the forefront of efforts to promote gender rights globally as well as playing an important role in supporting Rohingya refugees.
Farhana received high recommendations from her Cambridge supervisors and was the unanimous choice of the CCSF committee to receive the Tammy Chen Memorial Scholarship, given in memory of a former CCSF scholar murdered in Burkina Faso during a terrorist attack.
