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Canberra Today 18°/23° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Sara thrives on danger’s front line

“THERE’S an enormous amount of untapped potential with women around the world, particularly in developing countries,” award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent Sally Sara told “CityNews” from Mumbai.

Sara, the first female correspondent appointed to the ABC’s Africa, South Asia and Kabul bureaus, has just completed a year as the ABC’s Afghanistan correspondent based in Kabul.

“It’s huge human capital, and you see countries that are struggling to develop,” she said.

“Yet women are not being given opportunities in education and employment and that’s hugely detrimental to those countries and it’s extremely hard for them to develop when they are cutting their labour force in half, cutting their potential in half because they are not giving opportunities to women.

“A lot of the research has shown, particularly in places like Africa, if women were only given more equal access to land, to fertiliser and other things and were able to give a greater contribution to farming, that areas of Africa that can’t feed themselves at the moment would easily be able to do so.

“It’s not an abstract concept, it’s really a matter of survival and very few countries are able to move forward without opening opportunities for women and benefitting from the contributions they can make.”

Sara will be in Canberra on March 8 and will speak about women’s empowerment at the Canberra International Women’s Day Lunch at the National Convention Centre.

She has reported from more than 30 countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Sierra Leone, and has written for “The New York Times”, “The Boston Globe” and penned the best-selling biography of 12 African women called “Gogo Mama”. She has been nominated for the Walkley Award six times and, last year, was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to journalism and the community.

“CityNews” caught Sara, while she was in India on leave, but researching her next book, set to be released in 2013.

“I’m doing some interviews for a book that I’m writing on 10 different women from across Asia,” she said.

“Places like Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Afghanistan and here in India. I’m interviewing an old lady in the slums here in Mumbai.”

Sara is best known for reporting, dressed usually in a head scarf, from one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

She told the stories of the Afghan people most affected by the war; the people who couldn’t tell their own stories to the world.

“I think I have realised how lucky we are in Australia,” she said. “We are one of the most stable, democratic, fair and prosperous countries in the world, I’m quite struck by that from what I’ve seen elsewhere.

“I’ve seen a lot of violence, and I am very glad we don’t see much of that in Australia.”

In a piece she filed for the ABC’s “Correspondents Report” late last year, she writes that she’s fallen in love with Afghanistan “even though I have no right to feel a sense of belonging”.

“I feel very strongly about the people, even though what happens here stretches all the way from humbling hospitality to numbing violence, suffering and lost potential,” she writes.

“Some kind of irrational hook has kept me here. I don’t question it much. As long as it’s there, I am here and I love it.”

In Afghanistan, Sara worked as a video journalist, filming and reporting her stories.

Working with a local Afghan, a “fantastic, very courageous and talented young producer”, they travelled “quite light and small and easy to move around”.

Travelling light means having about 35kg of gear on her back, including camera equipment, satellite phone, personal gear, sleeping bag in addition to about 10kg of body armour and a helmet.

“I find it quite heavy, but it’s about as light as you can go,” she said.

And although she avoids speaking about her most scariest experiences in Afghanistan, she does say being an Australian woman, does come with some advantages.

“Foreign female journalists are really lucky in a sense that they get to interview women, but also speak with the men,” she said.

“Some male reporters can speak to the men, but can’t get into people’s houses to be able speak with women, particularly in Afghanistan.

“I’ve certainly been spared a lot of the discrimination and the difficulties that the local women have to endure every day.

“So it’s been important to use that to tell their story when they are unable to do so themselves.”

Originally hailing from Adelaide, where her family still lives, Sally will move to Sydney in May, to take on the late Paul Lockyer’s job as the ABC rural and regional affairs correspondent.

To read Sally Sara’s “ABC Afghanistan correspondent’s farewell to Kabul” visit abc.net.au/correspondents

More information on Canberra International Women’s Day lunch, National Convention Centre, Thursday, March 8 at internationalwomensday.org.au

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