Safina Nabi

Safina Nabi is an independent multimedia journalist from South Asia based in Kashmir. As a fellow of the Berlin Scholarship Program, she learns how to better protect herself in the digital space. Safina covers conflicts, and writes about topics related to human rights, social justice, gender, health, and the environment. Her stories have appeared in a range of Indian and international publications like The Guardian, Aljazeera, Slate, Vice, OpenDemocracy, Christian Science Monitor, Article14, among others.

One of her investigations has been nominated for the True Story Award 2020 under the Human Rights category. She received a Laadli Media Jury appreciation award in 2020 for her gender-sensitive reporting and was shortlisted for Red Ink Awards 2021, in the category “women empowerment”. She is a Pulitzer Center Grantee and three of her projects were supported by the center as of now.

In 2019, when the Indian government revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir and imposed a communication and media blackout for months, she was among the few reporters who kept the stories coming. After the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A, reporting from the ground became extremely risky and difficult. Much of her work during this trying period focused on human rights violations.

For over a year Safina worked on an investigation about “Half-widows” of Kashmir and their property rights. Half-widows are women whose husbands disappeared and their wives have no information about whether their husbands are alive or dead. Since they have faced negligence not only from the state but from the local activists, NGOs as well as civil society, these women and their children are living a life of misery and destitution.

Safina is the first-generation woman from her family to complete formal education. She comes from a region which is ridden in unresolved conflict for decades now. Being the only child of her parents, very few women in her place from Kashmir would aspire to higher education and become a journalist.