TIME CRITICAL!

Remember how Malala was shot in the face for just trying to go to school? Imagine how the Taliban will treat the Afghan Girls Robotics Team who have been fêted by world leaders for their achievements in science.

We can't help all of Afghanistan, but we can help get these girls to safety! Please sign and share today.

Background:

The world has watched in horror as increasingly chaotic scenes emerge from Afghanistan. One of the last places not yet controlled by the Taliban is Kabul’s international airport, which is now protected by the U.S. military with the goal of reopening — to the relief and evacuation flights that have been circling Afghan airspace for days, unable to land.

Crowds of mostly Afghan men have swarmed the airport’s tarmac, some frantically clinging to the side of U.S. military planes as they prepared to take off, some falling to their deaths. The streets are overrun with thousands of thieves and assailants recently released from prison. Desperately trying to depart from that same airport is a group of young Afghan girls in grave danger: the Afghan Girls Robotics Team. There are reports of not only violence, but also that water has been running out at the airport. These girls and their coaches have been turned away from ticketed flights, and are waiting, now, for a breakthrough.

You may have heard of them. The team — from the provincial capital of Herat and made up of 25 girls ages 12 to 18 and their mentors — overcame war, terrorism and gender discrimination to emerge as a symbol of a new Afghanistan, one that champions girls’ education.

In recent years, everyone from US senators and the Council on Foreign Relations, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has hosted them and celebrated their achievements. The girls’ faces were even painted on the walls of the U.S. Embassy gates in Kabul.

But that very visibility and celebration by U.S. and Canadian aid and diplomatic agencies is what puts many members of the team in danger today — and why the Canadian Government and specifically Justin Trudeau, both of which were happy to meet with the team and say encouraging things when it made for a good photo op, must now urgently take action to help them leave Afghanistan to the safety of Canada.

These girls represent high profile targets to the Taliban, who will be eager to force them into marriages with men they've never met or far, far worse.

Call to action:

For its faults Canada has a proud history of taking in refugees in need, and this need is immediate.

Please sign your name and share this petition so we can show the Trudeau government that the people of Canada will welcome these girls on our shores where they can continue their education rather than be forcibly married or killed. We're counting on you!

Sources:

Large portions of the above background were written by human rights advocate Kimberley Motley, a U.S. human rights lawyer who has worked in Afghanistan for the past 13 years and is the author of “Lawless: A Lawyer’s Unrelenting Fight for Justice in a War Zone.” and Meighan Stone, an adjunct senior fellow in the Women and Foreign Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations, a former president of the Malala Fund and co-author of “Awakening: #MeToo and the Global Fight for Women’s Rights.”