“Afghan women can't wait any longer. In a column published in Le Monde and freely
available on a website, more than 350 personalities, including author Virginie Despentes, director Agnès Jaoui and the director of Sciences po, Mathias Vicherat, call on the French government to in place an
"emergency humanitarian reception program
" for Afghan women refugees in Iran and Pakistan since the Taliban took power in August 2021.
The text evokes the need, and the possibility, of
"humanitarian aid in border countries"
for these women
,
a commitment to issue them a visa to make their asylum applications, and a specific mechanism to help them settle as soon as they arrive in France.
Women exposed to many dangers
The column, written by France Terre d'Asile, journalists Solène Chalvon-Fioriti, Margaux Benn (journalist at Le Figaro), Sonia Ghezali and researcher Nassim Majidi, highlights the danger faced by these women when they leave the Afghanistan:
“They find themselves, alone, exposed to new dangers.
Difficulties finding housing and finding a job, violence, human trafficking…”
These
“few thousands”
of women had to make immense efforts to flee the liberticidal laws imposed by the extremist government of the Taliban.
Those who manage to cross the border - a fortiori single women - find themselves in the greatest destitution, and without assistance to navigate long and complex visa application procedures.
The few Afghan women who manage to obtain a visa for France often still have to find accommodation on their own, once they arrive on our territory, explains the forum.
Following the takeover by the Taliban in August 2021, the authorities have multiplied measures to restrict women's rights, drastically limiting their movements, their access to employment, their visibility in the public space.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are not allowed to go to school beyond the elementary grades.
“Girls and women are hunted down, beaten, with total impunity.
Guilty of everything, they are no longer worth anything.
Afghanistan is the most repressive country for the rights of women and girls”,
underlines the text
.
“We see the situation deteriorating very quickly.
We can't wait any longer.
France must act, by doing what it is capable of, ”
explains to Le Figaro Delphine Rouilleault, director general of the NGO France Terre d’Asile.
After the fall of the first Taliban government in 2001 and until their new seizure of power, Afghan women benefited from numerous humanitarian, educational and other programs, often at the initiative of organizations and States such as France.
“They had, for two decades, a window on life, the real one, the one that allows the dream.
For twenty years, with the backing of education programs and university scholarships, we have pushed Afghan women to believe in it, ”
regret the editors and signatories of the forum.
Even Afghan women living in the countryside, far from urban centers, had seen their rights and their standard of living improved.
Since August 2021, these fragile freedoms have been destroyed.
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