Action For Afghanistan Coalition

A Coalition fighting for the rights of Afghan Women and Girls, calling for a Global Summit.

Action for Afghanistan is a coalition of organisations campaigning, advocating and steering policy for Afghan women.

Afghan women are still fighting, the least we can do is stand with them. Their fight is our global fight. For equality. For dignity. For living lives of our choosing.

Afghan women and girls have faced some of the harshest consequences of Taliban rule, whilst leading the fight to protect human rights in Afghanistan. Western Governments have failed to listen to their pleas and stand in solidarity. To find out more about the Afghan Women’s Network you can visit their website.

  • Afghan women and girls face draconian restrictions unlike anywhere else in the world and it is getting worse with threats, beatings, cases of kidnap and rape, forced marriage, extrajudicial arrests with dangerous conditions of confinement, denial of due process and abusive conditions of release.
  • Women are segregated in every walk of life and cannot leave the house unaccompanied.
  • Women cannot work to support their families. Twenty million people are facing starvation and women are being hit most acutely.
  • Girls’ secondary school education is banned.
  • Women are forced to wear the burqa.

THE NUMBER OF WOMEN, WIDOWS AND FEMALE HEADED HOUSEHOLDS HAS INCREASED.

WHO IS THINKING ABOUT THEM? WHO IS HELPING THEM?

Hasina Safi, Afghan politician, human rights activist, and former Minister of Women's Affairs.

Hasina Safi, Afghan politician, human rights activist, and former Minister of Women's Affairs.

READ THE OPEN LETTER

a letter from the Advisory Group for a Global Summit for Afghan women and girls
The UK government must act to show it stands with Afghan women who continue to fight each day for basic freedoms against a fundamentalist crackdown on their rights. To this end, we urge that:

1. The UK Government uses its leadership on the women and girls agenda to make submissions on our coalition’s behalf to the UN and OIC. We need concrete steps to reverse education and female NGO worker bans. Afghan women must be at the centre of these conversations.

2. The Prime Minister agrees to meet with our coalition, including Afghan female leaders.

3. The UK should follow the example of Germany, Sweden and Denmark in establishing a specific refugee status for Afghan women and girls.

These are 3 things you can do to show solidarity with Afghan women and girls:

There is no asylum route available for a women at risk to apply

The majority of Afghans are stuck in the country and even if there was a route women can't leave their houses! How would they be able to get out? These are serious issues.

Zehra Zaidi, Campaigner and Co Founder of the Action For Afghanistan Coalition

Zehra Zaidi, Campaigner and Co Founder of the Action For Afghanistan Coalition