Human Rights Institute Is Helping Women Escape Afghanistan, But States Must Do More
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(OPINION) At the end of October, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute team secured the evacuation of 79 women judges, lawyers, journalists and other human rights defenders, along with their family members — over 370 people — from Afghanistan to Greece. This latest evacuation follows a previous successful joint venture with Greece in September, when a further 24 women judges and their families, a total of 114, were also evacuated from Afghanistan.
Woman judges, lawyers and prosecutors, especially those who were involved in the trials of Taliban fighters, are at risk in Afghanistan. Now that prisoners are being released —including those whom they put in jail — they live with a constant target on their backs. Similarly, journalists, particularly those shedding light on the dire situation in the country, are at risk for their work on reporting human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
Early this year, two women judges working for the Afghan Supreme Court were shot dead.
Over the past two months, the Human Rights Institute team — consisting of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Ewelina Ochab and Emily Foale — has been working with international and domestic partners to provide these at-risk women with safe housing, safe transport and evacuation from Afghanistan to a safe country.
Between Sept. 30, and Oct. 24, the team managed to evacuate 103 at-risk women and their families — close to 500 people in total — to Greece. Many of them have a final destination, and the team assists with their onward travel, including to Iceland, Ireland, Australia, the U.S., New Zealand, the U.K. and Germany. At-risk women without a final destination have been granted a temporary visa in Greece while work continues to secure a final destination. They are supported throughout the process.
The Human Rights Institute is calling upon states to open their doors to these at-risk women, to ensure their quick transfer and to provide an opportunity to establish a life away from the constant threats they face in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Its plan is to ensure that it finds a home for each woman at risk before Christmas.
Understandably, the 103 evacuated at-risk women are the tip of the iceberg. However, as it stands, with no state-run effort for evacuations and little support for resettlement, initiatives such as this are unique.
As many at-risk women are left behind and the opportunity to help them begins to disappear, states must unite in demanding the protection of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. This includes girls who are able to access education at all stages of their development, women who are unable to hold positions of power and women and girls who are held prisoners in their homes, unable to leave without a male escort. Women and girls should be able to decide their future.
Considering the Taliban’s legacy on rights of women and girls, it is unlikely that this will happen unless the states exercise considerable pressure on the Taliban regime to do so. As such, states must also wake up to the message sent by the Taliban and consider other ways they can help women and girls in Afghanistan.
This piece was republished from Forbes with permission.
Ewelina U. Ochab is a legal researcher, human rights advocate, doctoral candidate and author of the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 U.N. reports. She works on the topic of the persecution of minorities around the world.