Claim: The Aurat March in Pakistan was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, according to the newly-released Epstein Files.
Fact: There’s no evidence that Epstein funded the Aurat March.
In February 2026, multiple social media users alleged that the Aurat March, or Women’s March, in Pakistan was “funded” by deceased convicted child abuser Jeffrey Epstein (archived here, here, here, here, and here, respectively).
Part of or the full captions accompanying some of the posts are as follows:
- “- Aurat march was funded by Epstein. – Malala Yousafzai and the her charitable foundation also appear in the Epstein Files, Epstein was donor. – Iran’s 2017 anti burqa movement was funded by Epstein. Child r@pist and Satan worshippers are role model of Muslim feminist khwateen.”
- “پاکستان میں عورت مارچ جیفری ایپسٹین فنڈ کرتا تھا ۔۔ وہی جو خود 7 آٹھ، نو اور بارہ تیرہ سال کی بچیوں کا ریپ کرتا اور کرواتا رہا ڈوب کر مر جانے کا آپشن کچھ لوگوں کے پاس ابھی بھی موجود ہے [Jeffrey Epstein used to fund the Women’s March in Pakistan. The same man who raped girls aged 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14 and had them raped. Some people still have the option to drown in shame.]”
- “ملالہ یوسف زئی، ایپسٹین فائلز میں بیچاری ملالہ، Zionists/موساد “بچہ بازوں” سے پیسے لے کر پاکستان میں ‘عورت مارچ’ اور ‘میرا جسم میری مرضی’ خواتین کو “Empowered” کرنے کے ایجنڈا پر گامزن تھی [Malala Yousafzai in Epstein Files, poor Malala was taking money from Zionists/Mossad ‘child abusers’ and was pursuing the agenda of ‘empowering’ women [who believe in] ‘Women’s March’ and ‘My Body, My Choice’ in Pakistan.]”
- “And in those files they sponsored the aurat march (عورت مارچ) in Pakistan and all those organisers of that event should be jailed and prosecuted for selling out shaitani [Devil’s] message in Islamic republic of Pakistan.”
The posts appear to have spread following a 2 February post (archive) on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “New Epstein File release shows that Aurat March in Pakistan was funded by Epstein.”
The same user also wrote (archive) on 10 February, “From Aurat March of Pakistan to Malala of Afghanistan to Hind al Owais of UAE, all these Women empowerment are funded by Jaffery Epstein.”
We are not investigating claims pertaining to the 2017 protests in Iran or Hind al Owais.
What is the Aurat March?
Organised by local feminist collectives and activists since May 2018, the Aurat March is an annual protest held in multiple Pakistani cities, drawing thousands of people to rally for the bodily, democratic, economic, and social rights of women and gender diverse people, as well as to call out patriarchal norms.
It is a grassroots, crowdfunded effort but frequently faces backlash and conspiracy theories. It is a leaderless movement, not a registered NGO that receives any formal funding.
The Aurat March’s organisers and supporters have consistently rejected claims of foreign funding, terming them baseless and false.
In fact, they have issued calls for donations every year and clarified that the movement is built on donations from individuals and allies, that they do “not take any corporate or NGO or political party funding”, that they refuse money that “compromises our politics”, and that the rallies and protests are sustained by “contributions from the public and fundraising initiatives led by committed volunteers”.
Interestingly, some of the social media posts being fact-checked also repeated another false claim that Pakistani education activist and Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, wanted to empower underage girls by handing them over to child abusers for money. Soch Fact Check has already debunked it here.
The Epstein Files
On 30 January 2026, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) published over three million pages of the so-called Epstein Files in line with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law signed by President Donald Trump on 19 November 2025, bringing the total number of documents to nearly 3.5 million.
“More than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images are included in today’s additional publication,” the DoJ said in its press release, referring to the documents pertaining to Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
A financier by profession, Epstein “was accused of sexually abusing and trafficking dozens of women and girls” and “was found dead in his jail cell” after being arrested in 2019, according to The New York Times. His death was “ruled a suicide” but “fueled a host of suspicions about the investigations into his crimes and about his powerful friends”, the publication added.
The convicted child abuser was friends with multiple rich and influential people, including US President Donald Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, United Nations General Assembly’s (UNGA) former president Miroslav Lajčák, former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, and British Ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson, according to multiple media reports.
Other powerful individuals named in the files are former US President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of Britain, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon creator Jeff Bezos, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson, linguist Noam Chomsky, business professional Martha Stewart, and American filmmaker Woody Allen.
It is important to note that just because someone’s name appears in the Epstein Files does not directly imply wrongdoing by the person in question.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reviewed the documents available on the DoJ’s website using four key phrases: “Aurat March,” “March Pakistan,” “Women’s March,” and “Women’s movement pakistan.”
None of the terms turned up any results relevant to Pakistan’s Aurat March or its organisers nor do the documents contain references to Epstein providing any kind of funding to the movement.
We also checked the same in Jmail, an effort by Gen Z programmers — including Melissa Du, Riley Walz, and Luke Igel — to make “Epstein’s publicly released emails searchable through an interface cheekily copied from Gmail”. However, there were no relevant results.
We also reached out to the local chapters of the Aurat March across Pakistan for their comments and all of them denied the claim, saying their funding came from individual donors and not from abroad.
Lahore
In their statement to Soch Fact Check, the Aurat March Lahore organisers said the posts making the claim “were deeply offensive for a collective that has spoken so clearly and unequivocally about patriarchal violence and how men in power evade accountability for the harms perpetrated on the bodies of women, girls, and boys”.
They added, “Aurat March, since its inception, has been subject to disinformation campaigns, despite the fact that we have been clear from the start that we are a volunteer-run collective that is supported by individual donations from Pakistanis, with contributions ranging from 50 to 10,000 rupees [PKR 50-10,000].
“Aurat March does not take any donations from NGOs, corporations or political parties, let alone from someone as abhorrent as Epstein. The baseless link to Epstein could not be further from the truth and we hope that people actually engage with our on-ground work, attend our meeting[s], and take part in the march to see for themselves what we stand for.”
Karachi
Labelling the claims as “propaganda”, the Aurat March Karachi’s organisers told Soch Fact Check that they “haven’t taken any funds from any NGOs, political parties [or] corporations and [that] the funds we need to organise the march have always been fundraised through crowdfunding, largely from Pakistani women”.
“Aurat March, since its inception in 2018, remains a nonpartisan independent movement, made up of volunteers, working thousands of hours of labour over the last eight years,” they said.
“While we are disgusted, we aren’t surprised by this latest propaganda launched against us that Epstein funded the Aurat March movement. Since our inception, we have seen a systematic pushback from the establishment and religious militant parties against our movement, online and on the streets.
“It began with doctoring photos of the march, targeting, making rape threats against feminists online, and levelling allegations of American funding and Indian funding, of course with no evidence. In 2021, we saw a series of doctoring of our videos and pictures to try to [imply] that Aurat March had carried out blasphemy, of course which carries with [it the] potential of extreme violence. All of these claims were again debunked by journalists and media outlets.
“If one is to follow the accounts launching this (sic) propaganda-based campaigns, these are seen to be planned BOT accounts [automated social media accounts programmed to mimic human behaviour], indicating paid systematic propaganda against us. We are, of course, aware that we are not alone to be targeted and see this as a part of a planned pushback from the establishment against resistance movements and against people who speak truth to power.”
Soch Fact Check debunked the claim that banners or slogans at the Aurat March were blasphemous here.
It is also important to note that we are not investigating the assertion that the establishment is involved in propagating such disinformation.
Islamabad
In Islamabad, two different groups organise the rallies under the banners of Aurat Azadi March and Aurat March Islamabad.
Aurat Azadi March (AAM)
The AAM, which is organised by the Women Democratic Front (WDF), a socialist-feminist resistance movement, “has never taken any funding from anyone based outside Pakistan or from any organisation”, a representative told Soch Fact Check.
Tooba Syed, the WDF’s founding member and AAM’s founding organiser, said, “We have only received individual donations from Pakistanis based in Pakistan for organising the march from 2018 till 2021. After that, all our jalsas and baithaks have also been organised in the same manner.”
Jalsas and baithaks refer to rallies, gatherings, and sessions.
Aurat March Islamabad
In their statement to Soch Fact Check, the organisers said the allegations “linking us to foreign funding or to Epstein Files is baseless, malicious, and deliberately misleading”.
“We want to state clearly that Aurat March Islamabad accepts only local, individual, and community-led funding and we maintain complete records of our fundraisers publicly,” they said. “We refuse to engage with such unfounded accusations designed to distract [people] from our work. We unequivocally condemn the crimes exposed through the Epstein case and the powerful patriarchal networks that enabled the exploitation of women, girls, and children. Systems that shield abusive men anywhere must be dismantled.
“At the same time, we find it deeply ironic that while conspiracy theories are manufactured about a feminist movement, there is far less outrage when religious leaders openly oppose child marriage laws. Maulana Fazlur Rehman has publicly stated he would ensure children as young as 12–15 are married and that he would sit in those marriages. Another senior JUI-F [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl] leader, Hafiz Hamdullah, said he would personally marry a 16-year-old girl if ‘angry,’ rejecting the legal minimum age of 18, and called for mass marriages of under-18 children who have reached puberty.
“We question why more energy is spent spreading conspiracies about Aurat March than confronting statements, mindsets, and the very real dangers that openly undermine children’s rights, dignity, and safety. It is telling that conspiracy theories about feminists generate more noise than public statements that attempt to legitimise child abuse.”
Rehman and Hamdullah have indeed made such statements, which can be viewed here and here.
Multan
Laiba Zainab, one of the organisers of the Aurat March Multan, told Soch Fact Check that the claims are “absurd” and have gained traction largely due to a large number of people disagreeing with the movement and its goals.
“So basically Epstein Files is a new phenomenon for a lot of people but this is not new; this has been going on since ages. And this is one of the most horrific things that has happened… Let’s be very clear about it. But when it comes to Aurat March, it’s very easy for people to, you know, put out all sorts of false claims regarding it. These people still haven’t been able to prove [allegations] that we receive ‘foreign funding’ because we don’t. It’s as clear as that. And it’s not about individuals [but] it’s about our law enforcement agencies who investigated all they could but they could never prove it because this doesn’t happen,” Zainab explained.
“We do not get any foreign funding nor do any NGOs fund us. The only funding we get is individual donations and those too through … a lot of chapters are holding fundraising events, which are clearly mentioned as such — that it is a fundraising event — and we give open calls, people ask for audits, and [for] anyone who has donated we share with them each and everything, along with bills and all the proof of how the money was spent.
“I think it’s just another chance for people because their disagreement with Aurat March is over why women are demanding their rights, there’s nothing more than that. And I think that’s pretty much it. Most of us belong to the working class and we work and we’re funding these things from our salaries because this is a cause we totally believe in. So if someone thinks that Epstein funded Aurat March, there cannot be a more absurd claim than that.”
Hyderabad
In a statement to Soch Fact Check, Prof Dr Arfana Mallah, an organiser of the Aurat Azadi March Hyderabad, said the movement is organised by the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), the manifesto of which “prevented organisers from accepting donations from government bodies, non-governmental organisations, corporations, or INGOs, including UN agencies”.
“Similarly, Aurat Azadi March followed the same principle, with all organisers collectively raising funds from private individuals known for their advocacy of human and women’s rights. Every penny donated by individuals was shared on social media for transparency and credibility. The majority of donors are working women from Hyderabad,” Dr Mallah added.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the claim is false and lacking evidence.
We have previously debunked multiple claims pertaining to the Aurat March in the past.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim circulating here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook and here on Threads.
It was also shared here, here, here, here, here, and here on X.
Conclusion: Soch Fact Check found no reference to the Aurat March within the Epstein Files. The claims that it was funded by the convicted child abuser have been denied by its organisers and are part of a wider smear campaign against the movement.
Background image in cover photo: Soch Videos
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com