These Afghan Women's Rights Defenders Supported Canadian Survivors, Now They Need Our Help

For the past year I have worked with an amazing women's rights group in Afghanistan, the Gender Equality Research Organization in Afghanistan. This courageous group reached out to us when they heard about the draconian 18-year prison sentence of Helen Naslund, an Alberta grandmother, farmer, and abuse survivor who was jailed when she defended herself following 27 years of indescribable domestic brutality at the hands of her husband. 

Their letter became part of the Alberta Court of Appeal record in Helen's appeal, which helped show the global outrage at a sentence that failed to consider Battered Woman Syndrome and the right to self-defence after decades of torture, among many other issues. As we await the appeal judgment, you can learn more about Helen's case HERE.

"As we all are working to end this violence, the victory of bringing gender justice in one part of the world is a victory for everyone in the world," the group wrote. "Likewise a setback in one country affects all of us."

Their constant work on the ground in Afghanistan to end structural misogyny was courageous and effective, so much so that they had to flee with only the clothes on their backs. We are working on an application to bring one of the group's founders, a Hazara woman, to Canada.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group are now in France. While they are relatively safe, their lives remain in peril. Never hospitable to refugees, the French social assistance program for newcomers is threadbare, and they currently have nothing to live on in a strange new land.

This group has shown solidarity with women facing male violence in Canada, and we now have an opportunity to grow our support for the group's members as they continue their vital work to amplify the women's rights struggle in Afghanistan from their current places of exile.
 
The Rural Refugee Rights Network and Women Who Choose to Live are looking to raise $3000 Euros ($4,500 Canadian) on an urgent basis to help them with food, clothing, and shelter as they try and get a foothold and continue their solidarity work from afar under very difficult circumstances.

Let's not forget the sheroes of Afghanistan now that they are no longer in the news.
 
You can send etransfers to tasc@web.ca or cheques to Homes not Bombs, 2583 Carling Ave., Unit M052, Ottawa, ON K2B 7H7.

Thanks!

Matthew Behrens
Rural Refugee Rights Network and Women Who Choose to Live