Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy-Queen of Ethics.

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy (born 12 November 1978) is Pakistani journalist and filmmaker. She was born and raised in Karachi, Sharmeen moved to the United States for higher education at Smith College and then postgraduate study at Stanford.

She is also an Academy Award and an Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker. Her most recent work includes documentary features Song of Lahore and A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers. In the past 15 years, she has made over a dozen multi award winning films in over 10 countries around the world. Her films include Saving Face, Transgenders: Pakistan’s Open Secret and Pakistan’s Taliban Generation. Her work has aired on channels spanning 4 continents including, HBO, CNN, PBS, Channel 4, CBC, Arte, SBS and the Discovery channel. Winner of the Academy Award and 2 Emmy Awards for her documentaries; Pakistanis Taliban Generation in 2010 and Saving Face, a documentary which followed the victims of acid attacks in 2012. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy became the first Pakistani to win an Academy Award making history on February 26, 2012 .

In 2015, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy became the first Pakistani filmmaker to win two Academy Awards with her documentary A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which discloses the practice of honor killings in Pakistan.

Sharmeen’s films often focus on pressing social issues. However, despite being involved with investigative journalism from the age of 17, she remains committed to working on the most troubling issues facing society. “I’m motivated by trying to affect some sort of dialogue around the work that I do. I want there to be some form of conversation around it. I want people to think about policy change, I want people to re-examine that issue with a fresh lens. That’s what keeps me going.”

When you want to push change, and when you want to push the envelope – there will always be a price to pay. And that’s not just in Pakistan, that’s in any country– in any country that is going through a turbulent period.”

“I choose to live and work in Pakistan and believe very strongly that it is the country where I can have the maximum impact. But it’s also the country where I hope there will be the most change in the coming years. And so, if you were to ask me, ‘Do I think about my security every day?’, I would say no. If you ask me, ‘Am I concerned about it?’, there are times that I am concerned about it. But then I think about all of those people, in all those countries, that have sparked difficult conversations, and the paths they have forged and walked on. I am proud to be walking along the same paths they have.”

“Pakistan creates women like myself, but also creates the women that are in my films. And that’s what makes me very angry. The country has the potential of giving so much back to its women, and yet there is a part of the country that suppresses women. But I know the sky is the limit. We have judges, doctors, lawyers, heads of state that have been women in the past. I know that the potential exists. I hope that the women that have the potential help amplify the voices of women that don’t. The thing that separates women like me from those that are oppressed, who are mistreated, or those who are on the receiving end of violence, is opportunity. It is simply opportunity. We had an opportunity to get an education, we had an opportunity to work. And here we are.”

In numerous interviews since her Oscar successes, Sharmeen has described herself as a ‘story-teller’. This ‘story-telling’ has covered many genres; from the documentaries that brought her fame, to 3 Bahadur, a computer animated children’s film produced in Pakistan. Reflecting on her work, however, she argues that the content dictates the medium: “As a story teller, you should figure out what story you want to tell and then think about what the audience’s reaction is going to be. Tailoring films to an audience is not the best way to go about things. I make my films by thinking about what I would want to watch, what I think would reverberate with an audience, what I think will move an audience and then start working on it, fashioning the story around that. There are plenty of issues that still make me angry, still inspire me. And those are the films that I am choosing to make more and more now.”

Sharmeen’s most successful films have been in issues that effect women, and it is in this arena that she possess an invested interest. Interestingly, she sees the biggest obstacle to gender equality in Pakistan as being the same across the world. “The biggest obstacle to gender equality is patriarchy. There are people within the system who wish to hold on to the old status quo – and that is no longer possible to do in 2016. In communities where men have allowed women space, have encouraged them to get an education, encouraged them to work, those are the communities that have lower levels of violence, that prosper more, that have economic stability, and households that are more stable.”

She is also the first non-American to win the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Pakistani president conferred the highest—civilian award Hilal-e-Imtiaz to Obaid-Chinoy for bringing honor and glory to Pakistan as a filmmaker.The Canadian government rewarded her with a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work in the field of documentary films.

Pakistan, our dearest homeland is sadly not a peaceful place for the daughter of Adam. Yes, girls are the pride, they are the respect but not the tissue paper to use and throw away. Sorry men, they are not your cheap possessions to make them your slaves. So, lets support every voice raised for the rights of girls. Let's make Pakistan and everywhere a peaceful place for all the people especially for girls to survive freely. THANK YOU!