by Kate Collins, Duke University Libraries
The 2025 Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award, presented by the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, has been awarded to the podcast Inside Kabul.
Produced and originally broadcast by FRANCE INTER (French Public Radio) Inside Kabul was created and directed by Caroline Gillet in collaboration with Marwa and Raha. Inside Kabul tells the story of two young friends whose lives were upended when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. As they faced an increasingly dangerous present and an uncertain future, Raha and Marwa exchanged and recorded hundreds of voice notes via WhatsApp with Gillet, a noted French journalist.
These recordings became the heart of the podcast, offering a raw, intimate, and immediate documentation of displacement. As the podcast describes:
“What emerges is a raw and incredibly intimate chronicle of two young women coming of age amidst the collapse of the world they had known. While Raha has chosen to stay in Kabul and is confronted with the violence of the new regime, Marwa has left and finds herself locked up in a refugee camp in Abu Dhabi.”
