RASC News Agency: As the plight of Afghanistani refugees continues to intensify across the region and beyond, the Afghanistani Women’s Movement in Exile has issued a dire appeal to the international community, warning that thousands of Afghanistani women living abroad face escalating threats to their safety, dignity, and fundamental rights, while the world looks away. In a statement released this week, the movement which comprises exiled Afghanistani women activists, journalists, educators, lawyers, and civil society leaders described the harrowing conditions many women now endure in countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and others. According to the declaration, these women are not only stripped of their basic rights, but also exposed to daily threats including arbitrary arrest, forced deportation, lack of legal documentation, gender-based discrimination, physical and sexual violence, and denial of access to healthcare and education.
The movement invoked Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which enshrine the right of individuals fleeing persecution to seek asylum and receive international protection. “Every human being who flees persecution, gender-based violence, or political oppression has the inalienable right to seek safety and protection beyond their homeland,” the statement reads. However, the group stressed that this right remains a hollow promise for the thousands of Afghanistani women who have fled Taliban tyranny only to find themselves trapped in a new purgatory unrecognized, unsupported, and unseen.
“The international community has failed in its moral and legal obligations,” the statement declares. “Women who escaped persecution under the Taliban regime simply for daring to learn, to teach, to speak, or to lead are now stranded in exile, living in fear and without legal clarity or hope for resettlement.” According to the movement, many of these women were forced out of Afghanistan because they were journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, judges, educators, or civil servants roles that the Taliban views as defiance and punishes with violence or death. Yet in exile, they continue to be denied protection, navigating a world that increasingly treats their suffering as invisible. The statement also strongly rebukes Western governments and international institutions, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for their profound inaction. It accuses these entities of “turning a blind eye to a humanitarian emergency that disproportionately affects Afghanistani women,” and calls their silence “a tacit acceptance of the Taliban’s gender apartheid.”
“This silence is not neutrality,” the statement says. “It is complicity. When global institutions fail to act, they empower the forces that wish to erase us.” The group further warns that this neglect is not only a violation of international conventions but also a direct assault on the physical and psychological health of thousands of women already traumatized by war, displacement, and oppression. “The emotional toll of statelessness, fear, and institutional abandonment is devastating. We fear for our lives every day not just in Afghanistan, but in the shadows of countries that refuse to recognize our rights.” In its concluding remarks, the Afghanistani Women’s Movement in Exile calls on the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and host governments to take immediate and decisive action:
Halt all forced deportations of Afghanistani refugees, especially women and children. Ensure access to legal residency, humanitarian protection, and resettlement opportunities. Acknowledge the systemic gender-based persecution Afghanistani women face under Taliban rule. The movement is part of a growing network of diaspora-based Afghanistani women’s organizations that emerged following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Their collective mission is to resist the Taliban’s institutionalized misogyny and advocate for the protection, resettlement, and empowerment of Afghanistani women globally.
In their words,
“We are not victims we are survivors. But survival alone is not enough. We demand to live with dignity, with freedom, and with justice. The world must no longer remain indifferent.”
