Afghan Women and Girls

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I welcome you to your place, Mrs Latham, and congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this important debate.

Women are particularly at risk in Afghanistan, as a consequence of their sex and the overwhelmingly misogynistic and brutal society that the Taliban are imposing on the people of Afghanistan. Hon. Members may be aware that I have been working with the former judge Marzia Babakarkhail, who came to the United Kingdom in 2008 after two attempts on her life by the Taliban. Marzia has organised the campaign for the United Kingdom to assist female judges and prosecutors in danger from the Taliban. She has daily contact with these women and has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Day in, day out, she gets messages and calls from women who fear that they will be murdered by the Taliban. At least one already has been. Marzia has taken on a huge burden and the emotion laid on to her daily would be too much to bear for most of us. She has been a tower of strength, but she, too, is deeply affected. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to her.

The United Kingdom encouraged women in Afghanistan to take up the roles of judges and prosecutors as part of our project to support the creation of a democracy governed by the rule of law. We encouraged these women to be part of a nation-building project that has now put them in the most severe danger. I am ashamed that the United Kingdom has abandoned them.

Early on, with the assistance of philanthropists, including JK Rowling, Baroness Helena Kennedy managed to get some of those women out. They are starting new lives in the west, but dozens have been left behind. Reuters journalists Emma Batha and Orooj Hakimi recently chronicled their plight in detail in an article published on 3 May. If the United Kingdom were prepared to offer more humanitarian visas, we could offer hope to those women. I have been campaigning for that for a long time, and have raised the issue repeatedly in Parliament. Last summer, I met Foreign Office officials, who felt that a case could be made for those women, but I fear that the Home Office is standing in the way of progress.

Last month, I presented a petition requesting that the House of Commons urge the Government to immediately help evacuate and settle female judges, prosecutors and their families from Afghanistan by providing emergency visas. It mirrored an online petition signed by more than 56,000 people. It was signed by the dean of the Faculty of Advocates—effectively the chair of the Scottish Bar—my friend Roddy Dunlop KC, reflecting the solidarity of people in the legal profession across the United Kingdom in respect of the plight of our colleagues in Afghanistan. The petition asked for urgent action, and the following day I met the Prime Minister to urge him to take action to save those women. He seemed favourably disposed to my arguments for a special humanitarian visa, and so did the Minister for Immigration when I raised the matter in the Chamber two weeks ago, but we now need a sense of urgency.

At least one of those women has already been murdered. Although some have managed to escape and slowly rebuild their lives abroad, many are still trapped in Afghanistan, and the criminals and terrorists they prosecuted and sentenced have been freed from prison and are actively hunting them down. Taliban fighters have raided their former homes looking for them, and many are in hiding, living in constant fear. Those women, whom the west encouraged to enter professions such as the law and lead a new civic Afghanistan, are at risk due to their former position in civic life and doubly so because of their sex. As the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) said, they cannot travel unaccompanied, which makes it more difficult for them to hide and flee.

The UK should have acted long ago to help those women, and it is a disgrace that we have not. What we have done so far is not nearly enough; urgent action is needed. I realise that the Minister is not a Home Office Minister, but nevertheless my question for him is this: when will the United Kingdom Government introduce a humanitarian visa scheme for the women of whom I speak? Please will he ask his Home Office colleagues to put a timescale on it? I understand that there are logistical difficulties in getting those women out of the country, but Germany has a scheme that I urge the British Government to look at. Something must be done without further delay; otherwise, the blood of those women and their children will be on our hands.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I must apologise to the Chamber; the confusion is entirely mine. You had the correct information, Mrs Latham, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). I had not correctly read our Whips bulletin, which is something I am not proud of given some of the roles I have had in this House in the past. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, we might have expected to see you contributing to this debate, so it is great that you are able to chair it.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing the debate, and on her very collegiate approach to the issue. It was a huge privilege to attend the screening that she and the all-party parliamentary group organised of “Women at War: Afghanistan”, where we heard directly from women who have come here seeking refuge and safety. In the documentary we witnessed the testimony of those who remain in Afghanistan.

I join in the tributes to Alex Crawford for her commitment and dedication to bringing those women’s stories to a global audience. The stories were powerful and moving, and they demand a response. The speed and the scale of the regression and oppression of women’s rights in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power almost beggars belief. Almost overnight women were excluded from the public sphere, and as months and now years have gone by, those exclusions have become harsher and even more restrictive. UNESCO estimates that around 80% of school-age Afghan girls—nearly 2.5 million—are now out of school. As we heard at the film screening, the true number may be even higher.

However, as we also heard at the film screening and as the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) mentioned in her intervention, it is not uncommon for daughters of Taliban figures, particularly those in senior and leadership positions, to be sent beyond Afghanistan’s borders so that they can be educated. What that demonstrates is not just astonishing hypocrisy but also just how thin the alleged ideology and religious conviction of the Taliban is, because the Taliban’s actions are not about enforcing particular religious convictions but about enforcing an ideology of power and subservience that has no real grounding in the teachings of Islam or any other major world religion.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is making a very powerful speech. Does he agree that the point he has just made shows that this issue is not about religion but about structural misogyny and discrimination against women on the grounds of their sex?

[Patrick Grady]

Yes. My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right; indeed, I think that point has been made by all the speakers here in Westminster Hall this morning.

However, in the documentary and in the testimonies to the APPG, we also heard about the inspirational women, and men, who are risking everything to continue to provide education, skills and training to others, out of sight of the Taliban. It is often said that educating girls is one of the key interventions that can unlock sustainable and long-term routes out of poverty. But as we have already heard, the United Nations Development Programme estimates that nearly 85% of Afghans are living in poverty, and the Taliban’s actions to exclude women from many sectors of employment has caused, as Members said earlier, a significant reduction in Afghanistan’s gross domestic product.

If we want to see the value of education, we only need to look at Hillhead High School in Glasgow North. The school’s Feminism Club, facilitated by modern studies teacher Miss Thomson, wrote to me recently to express their solidarity with the women of Afghanistan and their outrage at the oppression that those women face and the denial of their basic human rights. In their letter to me, the club said:

“The Taliban’s regime is hurting everyone in the country, but disproportionately it is women who are suffering…to ban them from work is to force women to be at the mercy of men…to ban girls and women from education is to deny them their dreams of a life of their own…a lack of access to healthcare will see women suffer immensely.”

Of course those sentiments echo the conclusions that have been reached by many international bodies and observers, many of which have already been quoted in today’s debate. My constituents went on to say:

“The United Kingdom is an influential voice in the world forum. We would like to ask you what the UK Government are doing to advocate for the rights of Afghan women and ask you to raise this as an issue at Prime Minister’s questions.”

As Members know, the chance to raise issues at PMQs is never guaranteed, although both the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) have been able to raise the cases that they spoke about today at Prime Minister’s questions. I pay particular tribute to my hon. and learned Friend for the work that she has done to highlight the situation of female judges and prosecutors in Afghanistan. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for her work on this issue. I also join both my hon. and learned Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central in paying tribute to Marzia Babakarkhail for the incredible work that she has done, which involves placing herself at risk in order to support others.

However, what I can do and indeed will do in Westminster Hall today is ask the Minister present, who speaks for the whole of the UK Government, what his Government are doing to advocate for the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. I hope that when he next meets the Prime Minister, he will let him know that the Feminism Club at Hillhead High School demands action.

Of course, it is difficult to act when the resources available to the Government have been depleted because of the decision to reduce the aid budget drastically, so the Minister urgently needs to clarify whether the Independent Commission for Aid Impact is correct in its understanding that UK humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan in 2023-24 will be £100 million, which is less than half of what was provided in the previous financial year. The hon. Member for North East Fife was quite right about the need for long-term budgeting and stability. Even if the aid budget is being reduced, which many of us oppose, there should at least be a planning horizon that people can work with. Of course there are very practical issues about disbursing funding. Nevertheless, the United Nations has appealed for $4.6 billion to meet humanitarian need in Afghanistan, but it has only received pledges of around 9% of that sum.

However, even where the UK could effectively channel resources, it seems incapable of doing so. Many women in Afghanistan are desperate to access safe and legal routes that would allow them to seek safety and refuge here in the UK, but the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, or ACRS, has been an abject failure, with pitifully low numbers of people coming through it. We only have to listen again to the speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central, the hon. Members for Twickenham and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis)—indeed, the speeches of practically everybody who has spoken today—to know that. As the hon. Member for Strangford said, almost all of us have probably had a constituency case or have a constituent who has a relative stuck in Afghanistan who wants to come here.

However, the UK Government’s position is that Afghans who arrive here through irregular routes should be criminalised and deported to Rwanda. That is the Government’s position: Afghan women and girls, no matter their background or struggles, if they arrive here in a small boat or on the back of a lorry, are not welcome and should be deported. I wonder whether the Minister has the guts to get up and say that out loud.

The Government’s position is to criminalise women and girls from Afghanistan who come here using irregular routes, and that they are not welcome. That is the language the Home Secretary uses, but whenever I hear UK Ministers denigrate and belittle refugees and asylum seekers, I think of my friends and constituents, Abdul and Khalida Bostani, and their seven children. Abdul arrived in the UK on the back of a lorry, fleeing the Taliban, 20 years ago. Today’s Tory Government would criminalise and deport him for that, denying his family the life they have made, his role as a councillor on Glasgow City Council, and the work of Glasgow Afghan United, which the hon. Member for North East Fife spoke about. That organisation works to build tolerance and understanding among different communities in the city, and runs the inspiring women’s empowerment programme, which the hon. Lady also spoke about and had the privilege of visiting. Glasgow is a city that welcomes refugees, and as the pupils of Hillhead High School have shown, it is a city that stands in solidarity with the women and girls of Afghanistan.

There is no quick and easy solution to the crisis in Afghanistan, but that does not mean that there is no possible solution or response. The UK Government should be using their influence at the United Nations and elsewhere to hold the Taliban regime to account and to call out their egregious breaches of human rights and women’s rights. The UK Government should contribute to multilateral funds that are providing humanitarian relief and assistance to where it is most needed, and they need properly to invest in safe and legal routes that would allow people fleeing Afghanistan to seek safety in the UK, particularly if they have family or community connections, or have previously served UK Government or business outposts in Afghanistan.

As today’s debate has shown, there is a cross-party consensus that action is needed, and that the Government can do better. We speak with the voices of our constituents and on behalf of those who have given testimony that we have heard directly from Afghanistan at events such as those organised by the APPG. We need more than words from the Minister. We need action.

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[David Rutley]

I noted the point that my right hon. Friend made in his short but important contribution, which he has just reiterated. I will take that away and follow it up with the Home Office.

I want to highlight the important work that we should carry on doing to get the Taliban to change course.

[Joanna Cherry]

I realise that the Minister is not a Home Office Minister, but I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall in relation to the humanitarian visa. Will he undertake to at least speak to his Home Office counterparts about that? As I said, I met the Prime Minister, who seemed amenable to the idea, but time is of the essence.

[David Rutley]

Understood. I apologise for not responding to that point earlier. I will follow up on that. There are already pathways set out. I understand that there are frustrations with the pace of the response in some of them, but we are moving forward with them.

I will conclude in order to give the hon. Member for North East Fife enough time to make her concluding remarks. The Taliban need to end their discrimination against and repression of women and girls. They must allow them back into schools and universities, and lift the restrictions on employment for women. Educated and empowered women in Afghanistan will contribute to economic development, peace and stability across the country. It is clear that without that the country will never achieve longer-term stability or prosperity.