Captured: Afghanistan’s ‘Dancing Boys’ and the Hazaras | Barat Ali Batoor

Born in Pakistan, Barat Ali Batoor moved to Afghanistan as a photojournalist.  His parents fled the country in the early 70s because of the discrimination they experienced as Hazaras, an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan that has faced political, economic and social repression for more than a century.

In this episode, Barat takes us on his gripping journey — one that reached its apex when he documented the injustice done to the ‘Dancing Boys’ and the practice called ‘Bacha Bazi’ a tradition found across Afghanistan involving the sexual exploitation of boys.  He was forced to flee to find safety, like other journalists and whistleblowers who face threats to their life from exposing the wrongdoings of those in power.  

On the show, we unpack the difference between a political asylum seeker and a refugee, and better understand why two thirds of the refugees in the world have been waiting roughly 20 years or more for their cases to be resolved. We also  dive briefly into the experience of the Hazara population, historic context into the political instability in Afghanistan and the danger attached to Barat’s work.

Featuring policy and advocacy insights from experts:  Charu Lata Hogg, Executive Director of All Survivors Project, Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Lecturer at La Trobe University and James Hathaway, Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at University of Michigan Law School.

The Elders Special Segment Guest: Ban Ki-moon, Deputy Chair of The Elders and Former United Nations Secretary-General. 

Host: Hazami Barmada, Founder & CEO, Humanity Lab Foundation and co-Executive Producer of Finding Humanity Podcast.

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FOR ADDITIONAL LEARNING ON THIS TOPIC, view our free educational toolkit and "policy deep-dive" document. We invite you to use this episode/toolkit for continued learning, advocacy and activism.

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Speaker Biographies:

BARAT ALI BATOOR is a multi award-winning photographer and freelance photojournalist

Barat Ali Batoor started photography in 2002 and launched his first solo exhibition in 2007. His photographs were exhibited in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. His works have been published in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Stern, India Today, Risk Magazine, The Global Mail, The Daily Mail, The West Australian, Strategic Review and others. He participated in “Lahore Artist Residency” by VASL in Lahore, Pakistan and was the 2009 recipient of a photography grant from New York’s Open Society Institute for the project “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.” He is the winner of Nikon-Walkleys Photo of the Year 2013 award as well as a winner in the Photo Essay category. He was also awarded “Communication for Social Change Award” by the University of Queensland. He was a speaker at the TEDxSydney in 2014. Batoor currently works as a freelance photographer and teaches photojournalism at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Twitter: @BaratBatoor

CHARU LATA HOGG is the Executive Director of All Survivors Project and Associate Fellow at the Chatham House

Charu Lata Hogg is Executive Director of All Survivors Project. She is an Associate Fellow in the Asia Program at Chatham House since 2004 where she covers political and human rights developments in South and SouthEast Asia. She is the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice. She worked as the South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch until 2009 and documented violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Before joining Chatham House, she was an international journalist based in India, Sri Lanka and London writing for among others, Far Eastern Economic Review, the BBC-South Asia Regional Unit, India Today and The Times of India. Charu has conducted in-depth research on sexual violence in Sri Lanka, and provided expert evidence to the UK Upper Tribunal Country Guidance case on Sri Lanka in 2013. She received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Hindu College, University of Delhi and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Twitter: @AllSurvivorsPro

JAMES HATHAWAY is the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Refugee Law, University of Amsterdam

James C. Hathaway earned law degrees from the Osgoode Hall Law School (Toronto) (LL.B. Honours) and Columbia (LL.M., J.S.D.), and has received doctoral degrees honoris causa from the Université catholique de Louvain (2009) and University of Amsterdam (2017). From 2008 until 2010 Hathaway was on leave from the University of Michigan to serve as the Dean of Law and William Hearn Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, where he established Australia’s first all-graduate legal education program. He previously held positions as Professor of Law and Associate Dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada (1984-1998), Counsel on Special Legal Assistance for the Disadvantaged to the Government of Canada (1983-1984), and Professeur adjoint de droit at the Université de Moncton, Canada (1980-1983). He has been appointed a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, and at the Universities of California, Macerata, San Francisco, Stanford, Tokyo, and Toronto. Hathaway’s publications include more than one hundred journal articles, book chapters, and studies; a leading treatise on the refugee definition (The Law of Refugee Status, second edition 2014 with M. Foster; first edition 1991, republished in both Russian in 2007 and Japanese in 2008); an interdisciplinary study of models for refugee law reform (Reconceiving International Refugee Law, 1997); and The Rights of Refugees under International Law (2005, republished in Japanese in 2014 and Chinese 2017), the first comprehensive analysis of the human rights of refugees set by the UN Refugee Convention and the International Bill of Rights. He is the founding Editor of Cambridge Asylum and Migration Studies and Senior Advisor to Asylum Access, a non-profit organization committed to delivering innovative legal aid to refugees in the global South. Hathaway regularly advises and provides training on refugee law to academic, non-governmental, and official audiences around the world. Twitter: @JC_Hathaway, @UMichLaw

DR. NIAMATULLAH IBRAHIMI is a Lecturer at La Trobe University

Dr. Niamatullah Ibrahimi is a Lecturer in International Relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne. He completed his PhD at the Australian National University and has published extensively on Afghanistan’s politics and history. He is the author of, ‘The Hazaras and the Afghan State: Rebellion, Exclusion and Struggle for Recognition (London: Hurst & Co. 2017), and co-author (with Professor William Maley) of ‘Afghanistan: Politics and Economics in a Globalising State’ (London: Routledge, 2020).Twitter: @IbrahimiNiamat, @latrobe

BAN KI-MOON is Former United Nations Secretary-General and Deputy Chair of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, who work together for peace, justice and human rights

Ban Ki-moon was the UN Secretary-General from 2007-2016. He mobilized world leaders around a new set of challenges and sought to give voice to the world’s poorest and vulnerable people. He put Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, and equality for girls and women at the top of the UN agenda; creating UN Women and securing the Paris Agreement. He is a former South-Korean Foreign Minister and diplomat. He is the Chair of the Global Green Growth Institute, Chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia, Commissioner of The Global Commission on Adaptation, and Co-Chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens.

HAZAMI BARMADA is the Founder and CEO of the Humanity Lab Foundation and Executive Producer and Host of the Finding Humanity Podcast

Hazami Barmada is a social entrepreneur, thought-leader, and public affairs and social impact expert recognized by Forbes as an “inspirational agent of change.” She has consulted for many leading global brands including the United Nations, United Nations Foundation, Aspen Institute, and the Royal Court of the Sultanate of Oman. She has held many positions at the United Nations including serving as the Coordinator for the United Nations Secretary General's World Humanitarian Summit, Advisor to the first-ever United Nations Secretary-General's Youth Envoy, and a member of the UN's SDG Strategy Hub. Hazami is the Founder and CEO of the Humanity Lab Foundation and is the host and co-Executive Producer of the Finding Humanity Podcast. Hazami has a Masters from Harvard University where she was an Edward S. Mason Fellow in Public Policy and Management. She studied social and public policy at Georgetown University and has a BA from Rhodes College in Anthropology & Sociology. Twitter @hazamibarmada; Instagram @hazami

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