Tag Archives: asylum

The endangered women left behind in Afghanistan

This is an account written by an Afghan colleague, with grammar and spelling corrected by me. She was able to flee Afghanistan and now lives in an English-speaking country as a legal refugee. This account is regarding what life is like for her sister back in Kabul, Afghanistan:

When I lived in Afghanistan, I lived with my adult, unmarried sister and my widowed mother, without a male family member, in Kabul. My nieces also frequently stayed with us and I, an unmarried woman, was the head of the household. My brothers lived with their families in Kabul, but across the city from us, and we did not rely on them for shopping or for money. Because of my job, the job of my sister, and a small inheritance from my father, we could all live together, even sometimes travel together, in relative peace and prosperity.

I worked for the Afghan government, as did my sister. We are both university educated. She and I could go to and from work on our own, but when we left the house for appointments, shopping and other tasks, or to walk in a nearby park or to visit relatives, we were accompanied by each other or my mother. This was accepted by society in Kabul before the Taliban.

In the chaos of the Taliban takeover, I was able to flee Afghanistan along with my nieces and my mother. We were able to flee to a country where I had studied many years ago, and we now have asylum here. My nieces, then all under 18, now live in safety. But I had to leave my sister behind, as the government of the country where I live now was unsure if they could count her as my immediate family, and she insisted we go without her and not delay.

After we fled Afghanistan, my sister immediately lost her job, as all women working for the government did, per the orders of the Taliban. She immediately lost her right to go to appointments or shopping for food alone or even with just another female family member – it had to be with a male family member. And she was immediately living by herself. Her male relatives, my brothers, do not live immediately close to her. I am sorry to say our brothers are not helpful to her as they should be, for many reasons: one brother is busy trying to provide for his family, to feed his young sons and ensure their safety. Another brother is dealing with a great deal of drama with a former wife and former in-laws, who are threatening his well-being. Both of my brothers are reluctant to accompany my sister in public, both because they do not see it as a priority and because she has a speech impediment, and in my culture, people with disabilities are not treated well on the streets, with many people openly mocking such people, and my brothers do not know how to deal with such disrespect and mocking (my mother was treated with great respect and no one would mock my sister when she was present).

My sister is an educated, professional woman. She graduated from Kabul University with a Bachelor of Science and she loved her job with the Afghan Ministry she was a part of, working in a small department where she felt her work was very important – I cannot say much about her work for fear she could be identified. She never had health problems, other than her speech impediment, in all of our years together. All of that has changed now.

Her work and life puts her in danger with the Taliban: she is unmarried, she lives alone, she is university educated, she worked for the government, she worked for a program funded by foreign governments that Taliban sees as the enemy, and she has studied and worked alongside men that are not her family members. She sometimes even worked directly with foreigners who represented the US and Canadian funders of her work.

I try to talk to her every day on WhatsApp. I am in great fear for her. I am afraid I will die before I ever see her again.

My sister is now solely reliant on just a few trusted people bringing her food, and doing it in a way that neighbors never see her. She cannot go to doctor’s appointments. She will go days with no interaction with any other human being. The Taliban are targeting Shia Muslims and people of Tajik ethnicity with oppression and physical violence – this is what my family is. My sister’s neighbors support the Taliban and are of a different ethnicity than us, and while they know there is someone in the apartment where my sister is, they are not entirely sure which family members are still there. She lives in constant fear of her neighbors. We believe that if they knew she was there, alone, they would inform on her, to garner favor from the Taliban, and the Taliban would take over the apartment and turn my sister out to beg on the streets, or perhaps decide she has broken their law and punish her physically and put her in prison. She is now, in many ways, in a prison, as she cannot leave her home or even be seen by neighbors. The isolation, lack of human interaction, stress, lack of physical exercise, lack of exposure to the outdoors and lack of regular nutrition are causing her to experience intense headaches. She has recently informed me that she has fainted at least twice and is unsure how long she was unconscious.

And I know she’s not the only one. I know there are more women in her situation – and much worse.

I have filed all of the paperwork with the government where I live for my sister to join me, my mother and my sisters here. I have gone to public meetings with national officials to try to meet them in-person and petition them to help bring my sister here. It’s been almost three years since we fled. I wonder if she will die before her case is even decided, and I fear what a rejection will drive her to do.

It is impossible to find comfort in this land of safety when I know what my sister experiences in Afghanistan. And I know that even in this dire state, she is in a more advantageous position than so many other women, than most women, in the country, at least for now.

I am now at loss of what to do, other than pray.

And I am at a loss of how to help my friend.

You can volunteer to address the critical needs of refugees IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY

Four human figures hold hands and lean back, none of them falling because they are all holding each other.

The Earth is experiencing unprecedented numbers of refugees and asylum seekers – people who have left their countries of birth, desperate to escape dire economic and environmental circumstances or threats to themselves and their families. They are looking to find a new home in another, more stable country. There are also record numbers of internally-displaced people (IDP) – people in the same situation, fleeing their homes but staying within their country of nationality.

Once a refugee, asylum seeker or IDP reaches a place of sanctuary, their struggles are far from over: they need permanent, affordable housing, the adults need jobs, the children need to be enrolled in school, the entire family needs language instruction in the local language, they need to know how to access health care (including dental care), they need to know how to access things like playing soccer at school or in a local league, when shops are closed for various holidays they may not be aware of, how to open a bank account, how to use mass transit, how the garbage system works, and on and on and on. It’s a huge amount of help that’s required.

Nonprofits, government programs and systems designed to help refugees are overwhelmed. In the USA, refugees and asylum seekers receive most of the help they need from VOLUNTEERS – people who are donating their time to help, time that competes with work and family requirements. And there are not enough volunteers to help address all the needs that refugees have, not in the USA and not in most other countries.

Before you start pursuing a volunteering gig abroad to help refugees, I beg you to look for opportunities in your own community. I live in a small town in Oregon and have discovered volunteering opportunities all around me to help refugees from Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Somalia and more. I have seen similar opportunities not too far from my hometown in Western Kentucky to help Afghan refugees.

I’m volunteering to help a family that is just around the corner from me. I’m volunteering through Portland Refugee Support Group. So far, I’ve:

  • found information already in Arabic from various government offices.
  • helped the children 16 and over, only two of whom speaks English, apply for jobs (three have found employment).
  • helped the oldest child, who is 20, find free English classes.
  • explained how to try out for the high school soccer team for the 16-year-old interested in such.
  • explained how Thanksgiving and Christmas affect store closings, bank closings and traffic.
  • taken the mom to the Halal groceries.
  • read through their postal mail and explained what they are receiving.
  • explained how the green card and citizenship process works (the official web site of the US government has complete details, plus I helped a family member of my own get a green card).
  • recruited two other volunteers to help (and I’m working on more).

Google Translate has been essential in communicating with most of the family members, but I can translate only two or three sentences at a time using that tool. Through my Reddit activities, I connected with a young woman abroad who is fluent in Arabic and wanted to volunteer as a translator – she translates large amounts of text for me, like explaining how the garbage bill works.

Other volunteers have helped with jobs research and interviews, as well as transportation, filling out government program applications, moving items, even getting a Christmas tree. One volunteer just drives the mom to the grocery once a month, nothing else – and that’s GREAT!

You can volunteer as much or as little as you want to – you don’t have to volunteer every day or even every week. You can volunteer just once a month. But you need to help on an ongoing basis. And when you sign up, you will need to go through a criminal background check and a short training – and the training will probably be online.

How do you find opportunities to work with refugees and asylum seekers near you? You go to Google and type in the name of your city, or the nearest big city, and the phrase help refugees and nonprofit (that’s how I signed up to volunteer where I live). You might find such opportunities on VolunteerMatch as well.

I signed up initially just to help with recruitment of more volunteers. I had no intention of working with refugees directly, because I live far from the center of the nearest metropolitan area, and most of the refugees live far from me. But after just two months, it turned out there was a refugee family right around the corner from me, and my help was welcomed.

I recommend volunteering through an existing nonprofit that helps refugees. But if you are ready to take on a lot more responsibility, including fundraising, and you are in the USA, note that, the Department of State, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, has created the Welcome Corps, a new private sponsorship program that empowers everyday Americans to play a leading role in welcoming refugees arriving through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and supporting their resettlement and integration as they build new lives in the United States. Groups of at least five individual American citizens or permanent resident adults will be able to apply to the Welcome Corps to privately sponsor the resettlement of refugees in the United States. Private sponsors, as volunteers, will be responsible for independently raising funds and directly providing essential assistance to refugees for their first 90 days in their new community. This assistance includes helping refugees find housing and employment, enrolling children in school, and connecting refugees to essential services in the community. Sponsors must raise a minimum of $2,275 in cash and in-kind contributions per refugee newcomer being welcomed. This is used to secure and furnish housing and provide for the refugee’s initial basic needs.

As for me, speaking as a volunteer through PRSG helping one family here in the town were I live, as a part of a team of three volunteers: it hasn’t been easy and sometimes, it’s been quite stressful. They need an enormous amount of help, far more than we can give. And the more successful I’ve been as a volunteer, the more I’ve been asked to do. It’s been essential for me to be realistic about the time I really can give and to set boundaries, and to recruit other volunteers to help.

If you are volunteering with refugees in the USA, or want to, you might find this resource helpful: Helping Refugees In Your Own Country. It’s USA-centric, but is adaptable to other countries. It outlines exactly the kind of help refugees need that you, as a neighbor, can realistically help with.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help