Zafar Shayan
Laila Haidari is a social worker and human rights activist from Afghanistan. She is the founder of Mother’s Camp in Kabul, Afghanistan. Laila is known as the “mother of thousands of children” due to her works helping the drug addicted people in Kabul. She was born as a refugee in Pakistan and grew up as a refugee in Iran. She has been a victim of child-forced-marriage and gave birth to her first son, while she was only 13 years old. She has studied Persian Literature in Iran.
In 1999, Laila founded a tailoring workshop for refugees. In 2000, she established a school for Afghan refugees who were prevented by the Iranian government to enroll at schools. The school has been active until 2009 and has educated over three thousand students. Laila could be more involved in various social and cultural activities after she got divorced in 2001. In the same year, she published a poetry book. Later in 2007, she began filmmaking and made three documentary films about Afghan refugees in Iran, one of which won the Best Film Award in Afghanistan.
Leila's social work activities began in 2009 when she returned to Afghanistan. She was aware of the situation of drug addicts as her older brother was once addicted. She established a rehabilitation center called “Life is Beautiful” (later changed to Mother Trust Organization), where the drug addicts get shelter, treatment, and then some skills such as photography and crafts. The center has treated more than 4,000 drug addicts, many of whom have returned to normal life.
In order to fund the camp, she and her friends founded Taj Begum restaurant, which later changed to a meeting place for social activists, poets, writers and journalists. For this reason, this restaurant has been inspected many times by the police and it was also attacked by unknown individuals.
So far, Leila has faced many problems in her work. The threats and attacks of the drug mafia and strongmen failed to stop her helping drug addicted people. Laila had to relocate her camp after it was attacked, and all facilities were destroyed. She was attacked several times and repeatedly received threatening phone calls to stop her activities, especially when she wanted to establish a female camp. Laila says, she has been also “threatened to death by men affiliated to Hizb- ut- Tahrir and Jamiat-e Islah”.
Leila has been involved in human rights and women's rights activities as well, among them was campaigning of justice for Shakila, a young girl from Bamyan, who was raped and killed in the house of a former member of parliament, Sayed Wahidi Behishti. She has been the subject of “Laila at the Bridge”, a documentary directed by Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirazaei, which won several international awards. In 2019, she was a guest speaker of Oslo Freedom Forum organized by Human Rights Foundation.