Women continue to lose out as the crisis in the Middle East heats up. That’s without even counting the ravages the war between Israel and Hamas is having on women and children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and beyond. The flow on effects in the region are dire and countries like Australia are failing in their obligations to protect vulnerable women and children.
As the threat of geostrategic conflict with Iran rise, so too does the situation for women’s rights defenders there. While women in Iran and Afghanistan both experience gender apartheid, there is little solidarity between the two countries.
(Editor’s note: Gender apartheid is the economic and social sexual discrimination against individuals because of their gender or sex. Some lobbyists are calling for it to be recognised as a crime against humanity. )
Many women’s rights defenders who faced specific threats to their lives when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan fled to Iran. Many of these refugees are Hazara or other religious minority groups that are targeted by the Taliban. They often chose Iran because of religious and linguistic connections to the country.
But they are not welcome by the Iranian authorities. It is estimated that more than 1.3 million Afghans currently reside in Iran as refugees or with valid visas to the country. It has been common for Afghans to face street harassment and police brutality. But that has increased exponentially in recent weeks and months.
Azadi-e Zan and our network of volunteers has helped over 350 Afghan women’s rights defenders escape to final destinations of safety. But we have hundreds more still in need of assistance, many of whom are in Iran. In recent months, women on our list have been kidnapped, subject to arbitrary detention by Iranian police, and physically assaulted by business owners while simply trying to buy bread.
Countries like Australia have refused to grant humanitarian visas to people who remained inside Afghanistan. People who flee the specific threats they face from the Taliban, are then exposed to more, general threats while they wait in third countries.
The slow rate of processing the visas promised to the victims of the Taliban has been incredibly frustrating to Afghanistan’s neighbours. Last year, the government of Pakistan implemented a nationwide deportation policyto remove millions of Afghans from their borders. At the most recent international conference on the future of Afghanistan, Pakistan said it would end this policy, but Iran has essentially stepped up where they left off.
Meanwhile, there has been a worrying trend in the last few months where Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has been removing vulnerable women from visa applications for Australia. This is entirely unsatisfactory.
There are multiple cases of families in Australia who have been asked to remove vulnerable women from humanitarian visa applications. These include the cases of a 68-year-old mother of a man who worked at the Australian Embassy in Kabul, and a 23-year-old unmarried Hazara woman. In the current regime of gender apartheid in Afghanistan, if these women were to be removed from the applications of the rest of their family, they would not have the required male guardian to cross the border with them and return to their hometowns. Similarly, they would have no one to rent a house for them, pay their livelihoods costs or take them for medical care if they needed it.
Earlier this month, a women’s rights defender also had her visa application flatly rejected. She ran nationwide women’s rights programs with funding from international organisations and has received personal and organisational threats from the Taliban. But Home Affairs said they thought she faced insufficient persecution in her country of origin or had somewhere else to go.
Australia has a whole of government policy designed to help implement the ten Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security. The resolutions were passed exactly because of women’s unique vulnerabilities during conflict and instability and the long term effect they have on international peace and security.
But the government is now two years overdue in its reporting against Australia’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. It seems the Department of Home Affairs considered it had no further obligations under this policy when the Australian Federal Police were removed from their portfolio. But this is entirely untrue.
Women and children are incredibly vulnerable when they are forced to flee violence. Because of this, they are entitled to special protections. Women’s human rights defenders need additional protections, all of which are outlined in the Women, Peace and Security resolutions. These protections include through migration pathways.
Even if the government is busy dealing with new visa applications in response to the crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, there is no excuse for failing to protect vulnerable Afghan women, and human rights defenders who have been waiting for humanitarian protection visas for years.
The Department of Home Affairs must ensure that they incorporate gender into the assessments they undertake for visa applications. It is not ok for Australia to speak the words of support for Women, Peace and Security at the Security Council each year, and at the United Nations General Assembly right now, while so blatantly failing in their protection obligations.
- Picture at top: In the Afghan culture it is a common sight to see the women completely covered when in public, July 10, 2002. This Afghan female shows the stark contrast between those traditions required of adults but not enforced on children. Image taken in the Province of Parwan. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Sean A. Terry) (Released)
Susan Hutchinson is the Executive Director of Azadi-e Zan, a small NGO that supports Afghan women’s rights defenders. She has been working to improve the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda for more than two decades with military, government and civil society organisations. She is also currently undertaking a PhD in International Relations at the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.
