Under the Taliban, Afghan women and girls face draconian restrictions unlike anywhere else in the world. It is gender apartheid.

Afghan women cannot work. Education for women and girls is banned from grade 3 at primary school, into secondary school and university. Afghan women cannot leave the house or travel without a male relative. They are banned from going to the mosque, parks and gyms. Women have been erased from public life. 

Many Afghan women have faced a direct threat to their lives from the Taliban because of their profile or the jobs they once did.

The overwhelming majority of those who were granted resettlement as principals under UK refugee resettlement schemes (*ARAP and **ACRS) were men. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the UK’s Afghanistan exit policy would prioritise Afghan women and girls. However, there is still no specific legal asylum route for Afghan women-at-risk. 

We ask the Government to:

1. Create a new asylum and resettlement pathway for Afghan women-at-risk;
2. Set out a timeline for resettlement of Afghan women-at-risk for 2024 and beyond***. This will give hope to women in Afghanistan and send out a clear message of the Government’s commitment to the women and girls agenda;
3. Be aware of gender bias in resettlement cases to date*** and not disadvantage those already marginalised due to extreme inequalities;
4. Establish a coordination committee of regional and thematic experts to work with Government Departments to clearly define "Afghan women at risk", establish the process for referrals, and assess the need for specialist services upon resettlement e.g. trauma counselling, peer to peer networks, opportunities to work, upskill and train, and language training;
5. Create sectoral lists of Afghan women-at-risk e.g. judges, prosecutors and human rights defenders, politicians, journalists, policewomen, domestic intelligence and security officers, teachers, health workers, activists, artists and musicians;
6. Enable family reunion on similar terms to the Ukraine Family Scheme and alleviate the onerous English language requirements on spouses of those men allowed asylum;
7. Help Afghan women-at-risk from inside Afghanistan but also those stuck in third countries e.g. Pakistan;
8. Commit to the principle that there will be no deportation of Afghan nationals to Rwanda or forced returns to Afghanistan or third countries whilst ACRS is being expanded to include Afghan women-at-risk.

The UK cannot abandon Afghan women who took up the mantle of freedom and helped rebuild their country after the international intervention that followed 9/11. 

* Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) - as this scheme was Ministry of Defence linked, the majority of those Afghans who came under this were linked to the 20 year military effort in Afghanistan and so it is understandable that they would be mostly Afghan men.

** Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) - given the sheer scale of  military linked Afghans at risk, the ACRS scheme was amended to absorbed some numbers from ARAP and also absorbed those already resettled in the UK under Op Pitting. So the available spaces to bring over civilian categories almost vanished. There are no specific asylum routes now for vulnerable Afghans such as women at risk. The UK Foreign Select Committee Report on Afghanistan found that out of the 15K Afghans resettled under Op Pitting, only 295 Afghans belonged to vulnerable categories - of which only 11 were women's rights activists.

*** Currently, the limited expansion of ACRS Pathway 3 in Year 1 (2023) allows 1,500 places for GardaWorld contractors (mainly men), British Council employees (mostly men) and Chevening alumni (70% men). There have been vague statements about expanding resettlement criteria to “wider groups of Afghans at risk” in Year 2 (2024) and it is clear that women at risk need to be prioritised. We need to save Afghan women whilst we can still find them. In the US and EU, there has been specific discussion on having a specific Afghan women-at-risk category.