Afghan Women and Girls

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for Afghan women and girls.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mrs Latham.

“We are deeply concerned about the apparent perpetration in Afghanistan of gender persecution—a systematic and grave human rights violation and a crime against humanity.”

Those are the words of the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, and the chair of the UN working group on discrimination against women and girls at the end of a visit to Afghanistan last month. Because of the gravity and extent of the issues that we are debating today, I hope Members will allow me to spend a short time outlining the events of the last 22 months in Afghanistan.

In August 2021, Kabul fell to the Taliban; within two weeks the UK had withdrawn from the country, ending a 20-year presence. There was a promise that women would not suffer under the Taliban’s regime. That was viewed with suspicion, which has proven to be correct. In March 2022, girls in Afghanistan were barred from attending secondary school—they have not returned. Shortly thereafter women were barred from travelling more than 48 miles without a male guardian, and that requirement in May 2022 was extended to any time a woman leaves her home. Despite that rule, men and women could not mix and were banned from dining out together or attending public spaces such as parks at the same time. That de facto ban is now formalised in all public recreation spaces.

In December last year there were a series of assaults on the ability of Afghan women to work. They may not attend university, teach or work with non-governmental organisations. They may not undertake any public office. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has been disbanded and replaced by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Women are required to wear a full body veil. Women and the men who are suspected of opposing the Taliban are harassed, kept in arbitrary detention, tortured and killed. I am sure that we have all received correspondence in our role as MPs that confirms those facts. Such a crime against humanity is so big and so appalling that it is tempting to look away. Those of us here today know that we cannot and that the Government must not.

On a basic level, millions of people are in dire need in Afghanistan. According to the World Food Programme, nearly 25 million Afghans are living in poverty, and the UN estimates that two thirds of the Afghan population will need humanitarian assistance this year. To put it another way, in evidence to the all-party parliamentary group on Afghan women and girls, which I co-chair, a representative from Save the Children told us that only 3% of families can currently meet all their basic needs, including food and shelter.

It is true that Afghanistan was facing difficulties prior to the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban. Economic conditions were deteriorating and droughts were increasing poverty and food insecurity. There are serious questions over the approach taken in relation to UK aid, but I know that the International Development Committee is doing excellent work examining that, so I will not consider it in detail today. What is irrefutable is that the economy and the provision of the most basic services have declined significantly in the past two years.

Expelling half of working-age adults from the workplace inevitably damages an economy, with businesses closed because of lack of staff, lack of customers, or both. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, and an expensive one. The World Economic Forum has found that the bans on women working will cause a loss of $600 million to GDP in the short term, while restrictions could lead to a further $1.5 billion loss of output by the end of next year. Meanwhile, a lack of aid, limited by many countries in the wake of the Taliban’s violent seizure of power and the exclusion of women from public life restricts access to public services, including, critically, healthcare. That is simply a perfect storm for many women. Following decades of fighting, many households are headed by women, who make up the majority of NGO workers. Those families are hit hardest by the Taliban’s edicts. The evidence from networks of Afghan women heard by the APPG is that women and children are commonly seen in groups begging. They face extreme poverty. Children are being sold, and child marriage is rising. This is in no way abstract.

When the APPG has heard from organisations that have been able to resume some kind of service, usually in nutrition or health, that resumption has taken place only region by region when exemptions from the edict banning women from working with NGOs have been agreed. The exemptions are obviously not secure, and are at constant risk of being revoked by the Taliban.

I accept that none of that is straightforward, particularly when the outcome is a decision not to provide fundamental assistance, but evidence from NGOs on the ground is clear: the women who need the most assistance are less likely to be reached by all-male teams. In any case, accepting the restriction would set a precedent and suggest that the Taliban’s rules were being accepted.

I am sure the Minister is concerned about the operation of NGOs on the ground in Afghanistan and about the need to try to prevent the humanitarian disaster we see unfolding. I hope he will use his time in the Chamber today to update Members on conversations the Government are having with NGOs and the approach the Government will take to the provision of aid to regional actors.

Will the Minister update Members on the breadth of NGOs with which the Government are engaging? This is a constant theme for the APPG and one to which I shall return, but it appears that only limited interests are being listened to by the Government. We need to ensure that we hear a wider range of voices, and that those voices are amplified and listened to. For example, a lesser-known organisation that has given evidence to the APPG is the Aseel phone app, which provides a digital platform that gives humanitarian aid directly through connected citizens, rather than incurring the bureaucracy and overheads of larger organisations. How can we here support such innovation by those who are in the country?

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The point the hon. Lady has made about the potential of technologies as ways to send money directly to citizens who are suffering under the tyranny of organisations such as the Taliban is significant for the UK Government. Obviously, we need to ensure that the security is tight, but technology offers a non-traditional way to get support directly to people who would otherwise suffer.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the right hon. Member, who is my APPG co-chair, for that intervention, and yes, I agree entirely. The Aseel app is innovative in that it allows people out of or within the country to send money to buy food and other essential goods and services that are provided by people in-country. That money is not just aid or a handout; it is providing work in the Afghan economy.

On the subject of NGOs and aid spending, I urge the Minister to use this opportunity to pledge a reversal of the spending cuts in Afghanistan. This is simply the worst time to withdraw funds. Not only is every pound desperately needed, but for each pound spent two more are now required to achieve the same impact, owing to the expense involved in operating safely in Afghanistan.

If the Minister is unable to make such a pledge today, I hope that he will return to his colleagues with the message not only that more funding, not less, is needed, but that spending must at least return to three-year cycles to allow for forward planning. Reducing funding allocations to a limited annual basis might have been understandable as a temporary measure at the height of the pandemic, but those days have passed. Meanwhile, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact is clear that there will be both operational and reputational impacts for the UK aid programme if the one-year cycle is maintained.

A specific way in which Afghan women and girls need support is through education. Secondary school girls have been kept at home and away from learning for more than a year, with no hope of a return in sight. Those girls might have reached their adolescence, but they are children, and their future is being stolen from them. Research by Save the Children has found that 25% of care givers believe that the teenage girls in their care are chronically depressed. No matter what political situation unfolds in Afghanistan in five, 10 or 15 years, there are millions of girls who arguably will always struggle to support and advocate for themselves, and to know their worth, as a result of the trauma and the restrictions under which they currently exist.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this really important debate. On her point about depression and mental health, she might have seen a powerful report on the BBC last night from Yogita Limaye, who reported on the epidemic of mental health and suicide among women and girls. Indeed, the son of one woman stuck in Afghanistan—the son happens to be my constituent—said to me that his mother said to him, “Please pray for me to die in peace before the Taliban do anything to me.” That is amplified everywhere. Does my hon. Friend agree that one important step the UK Government could take, particularly for women and girls, is to provide some sort of bespoke, safe and legal route for them to come to this country?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the report last night. I recently attended Glasgow Afghan United in the constituency of the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and I spoke to a woman there who is currently pregnant, but her toddler is back in Afghanistan. I do not know how someone deals with that, to be honest, from a mental health perspective, so yes. I know that the Minister responding today is not from the Home Office, but given that the Government have made some commitments under their Illegal Migration Bill to look at safe and legal routes, I am certainly sure that all of us speaking here believe that safe and legal routes for Afghan women and girls are a priority, and certainly should be.

A return to formal education is the long-term goal. If the Government can provide any update on their strategy in that regard, it would be most welcome. In the meantime, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—hopefully that was okay—said, we know that the internet is a fantastic resource for education and technology, for reading, learning languages, maths and science.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for raising this really important topic. I apologise, as I cannot stay long. On the subject of education, a point made to me by a number of Afghan women when I was at the UN Commission on the Status of Women conference is that it is utterly shocking that girls are banned from leaving their homes and going to school in Afghanistan, but, in the meantime, senior members of the Taliban take their own daughters and send them out of the country to schools in other countries. Does she agree that one of the things the international community could do is try to tighten up the sanctions against those family members to prevent that?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the right hon. Member for that powerful intervention. Yes—is it not always interesting how repressive regimes, particularly when they are repressive in relation to women and girls, take a different approach when it comes to their own children and families? We need to call out that hypocrisy, and I am grateful to her for doing so.

I will turn again to the technology aspect of education. The APPG learned in evidence from women in Afghanistan that electricity and internet blackouts are making access to education more and more difficult. The suggested solution is the distribution of wi-fi dongles that connect to third-country satellites but, as someone recently pointed out to me, the UK, USA and NATO cannot have spent the best part of two decades carrying out an operation in a country without putting infrastructure for communications in place. I am keen to explore how we can utilise what is already there. We need to find a way to spread that access to those who need it. An alternative is the design and funding of education spread through radio or offline applications. Again, I hope that the Government are engaging with all such initiatives. While women and girls are prevented from accessing education, we need to do everything we can to help them to do so in a safe way.

For older girls and, indeed, for women, access to international universities is vital to continue their education and ensure that they are best placed to help in the eventual rebuilding of their home country. There are Members—I see some here—who attended the recent showing of the Alex Crawford Sky News documentary, which highlighted the fact that Afghanistan is a society; women provide healthcare to women, and men to men. If women are prevented from attending university in order to train to become doctors, we can absolutely see what the outcomes will be for women from a healthcare perspective.

Some universities in the UK are already offering scholarships to Afghan women, and I would be grateful for an update from the Minister on any support that the Government might be able to provide to universities in that regard. I know that visas, even for education, have been incredibly problematic. Indeed, I wrote to the Home Office about that recently, asking for the ban on accompanying family members to be waived, given the status of many Afghan women as sole caregivers for their children and the restrictions I outlined earlier. I appreciate those problems are not technically part of the Minister’s portfolio, but we need to strive to make the current system workable. It clearly is not, with so few successful applicants. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) highlighted, we also need to expand visa routes for all vulnerable women who need to escape to safety.

[Munira Wilson]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. On visas and the criteria, given the challenges that women face in accessing education, patently the requirement to learn English needs to be waived, as does that of travelling to Pakistan to get biometrics. My hon. Friend is well aware of a case I have raised on the Floor of the House four times of five British children who are stuck in Kabul and whom I have been trying to get out for 18 months. They have British passports and four of them are girls, so they cannot go to school. The Minister for Immigration is willing to look at the case. Their Afghan mother cannot get a visa to come here and the latest is that she has been told she has to go to Pakistan to get biometric tests. She cannot travel to Pakistan without a chaperone, so I am being asked how she can get to the UK without a chaperone. That is the latest hurdle. I implore the Minister to take this message back to the Home Office: we need a sensible approach to visas for women and girls.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I have heard my hon. Friend’s impassioned plea for that family. What does it say that we cannot support British children to leave Afghanistan and what does that mean for those in the country more widely? It is clear that we need to take a sensible approach. We cannot use the Taliban’s restrictions as an excuse for not doing what we should for our citizens and those who are vulnerable.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and for securing this important debate. I have a similar issue. My constituent, who was a former office manager for the British Council in Afghanistan, is eligible for the resettlement scheme, alongside three other members of his family. However, his 22-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter are not because they are over 18. Considering the Taliban’s restrictions on women and the danger a young lone woman in Afghanistan would be in, does the hon. Member agree that the Foreign Office must ensure that young women are not abandoned to fend for themselves in a country where they have no rights or freedoms?

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing that case to light. There is no doubt: right from the outset of the fall of Kabul, our failure properly to support our British Council colleagues working in country was quite shameful. We need to do more. They are people who should come under existing routes. We talk about needing new routes, but the existing ones are woefully inadequate and are not doing what they were designed to do—indeed, what we were all assured they would do when we were told about them on the Floor of the House.

In relation to visas, I want to focus the Minister’s attention on one issue and I hope he can update us on this today: the ability of women, as referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham, to reach third-party countries—I am concerned that could be used as an excuse not to do what we should be doing—and their support and safety in those countries before visas are approved. I had an email from a former female judge who is now stuck in Pakistan. Women have very specific limited mobility. They cannot just leave their homes and head to the border. Pakistan is not necessarily a safe country for vulnerable women to be spending time without family and resources. We have to acknowledge that. I am no expert on what the solution might be, but there are many at the Government’s disposal in the region and in security. The UK must be a safe haven for Afghan women and any visa route must be designed with those women and their specific needs in mind.

I have touched on the very real issues where the UK Government can and should provide support: aid, education, healthcare, infrastructure and safe passage. As I conclude, I want to turn to the Government’s strategic priorities in Afghanistan. This year has seen the publication of the UK women, peace and security national action plan and the international women and girls strategy. It is not clear how they apply to the Government’s actions in Afghanistan. The Minister will know that strategic objectives for his Department under the action plan are to increase women’s participation, leadership and representation in decision making; to prevent gender-based violence; to support the needs of women and girls in crises, and ensure that they can participate and lead in responses; to increase the accountability of security and justice actors to women and girls; and to ensure they respond to the need of women and girls as part of their approach to transnational threats.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The hon. Lady is being generous with her time. One thing completely within the Government’s power is the steps they take with the integration of Afghan refugees to the United Kingdom. My office has been working with a young woman called Mah through Urdd Gobaith Cymru, which is much engaged with the integration of Afghan refugees at its centre in Cardiff, which has been recognised as an exemplar.

Surely we should look to prepare women and girls for the possibility of going back to Afghanistan, and ensure that they have every opportunity through education and skills gaining. We should also recognise the way that dynamics work in Afghan families in the UK. I hope to work with Mah to set up a toolkit to support women and girls as they arrive in the UK from Afghanistan, but I sincerely believe that this is something the Government should be leading on, showing what they can do within their powers in the United Kingdom.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

We have to remember these people come to the UK fleeing conflict in Afghanistan. Many of them, if the situation changes in Afghanistan, want to go back to help and support. I think about the judges that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) works to support, and about those who are former MPs or have worked for NGOs. These are women who care passionately about their country and want to return to make it better, when and if they can, and we should look to do anything we can do to help them maintain that while they are here in the UK.

The women and girls strategy sets out the principles by which the Minister’s Department will be governed: standing up and speaking out for women’s and girls’ rights and freedoms; emboldening and amplifying the work of diverse grassroots women’s organisations and movements; targeting investment towards the key life stages for women and girls; acting for and with women and girls impacted by crises and shocks; and strengthening the political, economic and social systems that protect and empower women.

Those are all excellent ideals and I am sure that everyone here, regardless of party, can get behind them, but I want to ask the Minister what they actually mean for women and girls in Afghanistan. What can I tell the networks of Afghan women who give evidence to our APPG about what the Government’s concrete plans are? I will be quite honest, Minister: they are not feeling very positive about the UK and its role in relation to Afghanistan. How are the Government standing up and speaking for their rights and freedoms? How are the Government working with the whole spectrum of women’s organisations? How are the Government supporting Afghan women’s leadership? How are the Government investing in women and girls? How are the Government preventing gender-based violence, which is institutionalised across Afghanistan?

I will give the Minister a simple starting point, as I conclude. Will he today join the UN in naming the atrocities in Afghanistan for what they are—a gender apartheid? Every point here is vital; everything needs addressing by the Government. Frankly, it should not need me and this debate for the Government to hear the voices of Afghan women. The APPG has heard from women with a wide variety of perspectives and experience, yet the Government have so far declined actively to engage. Let me state that more clearly. These women are here—the secretariat of the APPG is here today—and they are experts who want to share their expertise, but the Government seem to block them from the rooms where the decisions about them are being made. Engaging with a small number of stakeholders is not good enough, and it is not representative.

It is not often that politicians want to make themselves obsolete, but in this case I really do. I urge the Government to make my role as an intermediary obsolete, and to engage directly with all the Afghan women and regional experts who are at their disposal. They may be silenced in their home country; that cannot persist here.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Chamberlain]

I am very grateful to you for your chairship, Mrs Latham.

Sixteen MPs have been in this Chamber either contributing to the debate or chairing it, and if the Taliban had their way more than half of us would not have been here, nor would the two female civil servants and two female members of House staff. We need to think in stark terms about what has happened to women and girls in Afghanistan. That is why it is important that we resist the Taliban narrative, and even more important that we listen to women and girls.

I am hugely grateful to everybody who contributed to the debate. We speak passionately because we care, and we care because this is a matter of life and death for many of the people we have engaged with, and we feel a degree of responsibility to them.

There are clearly key things that we want the Government to consider, and I am grateful to the Minister for committing to several of them. I hope he will take away the APPG’s request that the Minister of State, who is the International Development Minister, meet our group—not just the MPs but, importantly, the experts we engage with. That is a very important message for him to take back.

It is clear that the existing schemes are not doing what we want them to do. I echo the comments of the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis): we should do something similar to what we did for Ukraine. Politics is all about making difficult decisions. There is never a right or a wrong answer; there is usually just a less wrong answer, and sometimes not making a decision sends a message. I agree with the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) that choosing not to do for Afghanistan what we did for Ukraine sends a message. I have had people ask me directly to my face: “What does this say? Why are we different?” I suspect we know why the Government are not doing that.

The Government are focused on small boats, and it is clear that there is no political consensus about that in this Chamber. They have talked about the reduction in the number of Albanians, but we know that, from the start of this year, the highest proportion of people coming in small boats are from Afghanistan. We know exactly why that is: the existing schemes do not work, and promises were made to people in Afghanistan who supported us and delivered the 20 years of progress that the Minister spoke about. We must do more; we cannot forget women and girls in Afghanistan.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for Afghan women and girls.