There are 14.2 million women in Afghanistan. In 2019, polling suggested that 41% of Afghan women wanted to leave their country. This was 2 years before the Taliban seized control.
As we know life for women under the Taliban is brutal. The Taliban have ‘effectively barred women and girls from secondary schools and universities. It has restricted their employment, and even altogether banned their presence in many public spaces’. If a woman disobeys these rules, the punishment is equally brutal, with women often facing arbitrary arrest and detention. The rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan are surging under Taliban rule.
The 1951 Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who has fled their country due to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. If we take a universalist view of this convention, any woman, or at least any woman who wants to engage in public life, would have very reasonable grounds to declare as a refugee if they fled Afghanistan.
Let’s say 41% of 14.2 million women still want to leave the country. That would be 5.8 million women with a claim for refugee status for fear of being persecuted as a woman.
For context, Turkey has taken in more refugees than any country in the last decade. Between 2011 and 2021, it took in 4.3 million refugees.
You’re probably reading this and thinking “well, of course we’re not arguing that we should take in 5.8million Afghan refugees”. If you’re arguing that we cannot take in that many refugees, then at some point you need to draw a line on which women qualify and who do not qualify for refugee status under U.K. law.
You may think that a reasonable place to start would be to prioritise those women who are deemed most at risk from persecution at the hands of the Taliban — female politicians, civil society activists, journalists. Employment opportunities for women are heavily restricted in Afghanistan. So perhaps, women who have been barred from continuing their career, such as those who work for NGOs, or professional female athletes who make their living through their sport.
But it is easy to see how things soon get complicated and morally opaque. Is the future of a woman who plays football at a national level in Afghanistan, more important than the future of an amateur footballer who cannot now follow her passion. Fundamentally, is it right to deem someone’s worthiness for refugee status or asylum on the basis of one’s job, or even how good they are at playing football?
The point I am getting at is this. Imagine you are in charge, and despite all the hurdles, you manage to organise the administration of effective, safe routes for Afghan asylum seekers through a British Embassy in Kabul or in neighbouring countries. Will you open access to 5.8 million refugees? If yes, I’d like to hear how you would effectively shelter and integrate those numbers into the United Kingdom while maintaining political consent from the majority.
If you believe there should be a limit, you will need to decide who is eligible and who is not eligible. Once a limit is set, you must decide whether it is fair for those who are ineligible for asylum, to be granted it on false pretences?
Is it fair to save Afghan women by mistake?
