Mahrang Baloch

For all the hope she represents, Mahrang Baloch is unsure if she’ll live to see a day when her community is no longer in turmoil. “Maybe,” says the 31-year-old doctor, who has been the target of harassment, arrests, and assassination attempts. “Our life is not certain in Pakistan.” 

Over the past two decades, a state crackdown on an insurgency in the country’s Baloch minority has led to widespread forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings—allegedly including that of ­Mahrang’s father, an activist whose body was recovered in 2011.

With many of the community’s men missing or dead, women like Mahrang are now at the helm advocating peacefully for Baloch rights. Last December, she led hundreds of women in a long march to the capital, Islamabad, demanding justice for their husbands, sons, and brothers.

The march brought unprecedented attention to the Baloch struggle, and Mahrang believes the momentum she has built will carry on. “There is a lot of threat. There is a lot of oppression,” she says. “Still ... we will struggle for humanity.”