RASC News Agency: The Afghanistan Human Rights Defenders Committee has issued a dire alert over the worsening humanitarian plight of Afghanistani refugees in India, describing their existence as a daily struggle marked by deprivation, legal limbo, and institutional abandonment. These refugees many of whom fled Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 now find themselves forgotten and forsaken, both by the host country and by the very international institutions mandated to protect them. In a statement released on Tuesday, July 8, the committee reported that a group of displaced Afghanistani men, women, and children has been holding a peaceful sit-in protest for over a week outside the New Delhi office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Their protest is a desperate cry for visibility in a system that has rendered them functionally invisible.
“Afghanistani migrants have lived for years without permanent residency, without the right to lawful employment, without consistent access to healthcare, and without formal education for their children,” the committee’s statement read. “They are alive but denied the fundamental elements of a life.” The refugees’ main demand is simple: recognition. Yet according to the committee, the UNHCR’s asylum procedures have become grindingly slow, causing prolonged delays that many describe as emotionally and psychologically devastating. Refugees chant, “A delay in registration is a delay in life itself,” underscoring the paralyzing effect of endless waiting.
“For years, we have been told to wait. But how long can a person wait when they are homeless, jobless, and voiceless?” said one protester, a former civil servant who fled Kabul after receiving Taliban threats. Even more disturbing are reports that the peaceful demonstrators have been subjected to harassment and intimidation by Indian police. According to the committee, authorities have responded to their lawful assembly with “humiliating and threatening conduct”, further marginalizing an already vulnerable community.
“We fled a regime that persecuted us,” said a refugee woman at the protest site. “Now, we face new hostility in a country where we sought refuge.”
The refugees are appealing urgently to UNHCR and other international humanitarian organizations to immediately resume life-saving services including the provision of food, medication, education, and financial aid all of which have been dramatically reduced or suspended in recent months. They are also demanding the acceleration of resettlement processes, which for many have been stalled for years, as well as the deployment of independent monitoring bodies to investigate and prevent the mistreatment of asylum seekers by local authorities. While the crisis of Afghanistani refugees in India has persisted for years, it has intensified in the aftermath of the Taliban’s return to power. Thousands of former professionals, civil society actors, women journalists, and political dissidents who fled the Taliban’s authoritarian rule now live in stateless uncertainty, unable to work, travel, or rebuild their lives.
“Our lives were shattered by the Taliban’s resurgence,” said one activist in Delhi. “We were driven out by religious extremism and gender apartheid and yet we are still being punished for surviving.” The Taliban’s governance has created one of the largest waves of forced displacement in Afghanistan’s modern history. Their policies especially those targeting women, minorities, intellectuals, and former government workers have left an entire generation uprooted and exiled. And yet, the same international community that once championed Afghanistani democracy and human rights has now retreated into silence, leaving these displaced families abandoned on the margins of foreign cities.
With no clear pathways to resettlement and minimal humanitarian assistance, many refugees are slipping further into destitution. Children are growing up without education; women are barred from safe spaces; and men are unable to work legally creating a cycle of dependency that strips individuals of autonomy and dignity. “We are not just surviving,” said a refugee father. “We are enduring a slow erasure of our identity, our agency, and our hope.”
The suffering of Afghanistani refugees in India is not a logistical challenge it is a moral failure. As long as international institutions remain inert and the Taliban remain unchallenged, those who fled in search of protection will continue to suffer in silence.
