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Commentary
Thousands of Afghan women risked their lives to help the US. Congress should do right by them
As part of International Women’s Day (March 8), the United States should honor its commitment to Afghan women refugees by ensuring they can remain safely in this country. But unless Congress reintroduces and passes the Afghan Adjustment Act, tens of thousands of people will be put in severe jeopardy.
After the Taliban took control of Kabul in August 2021, the U.S. evacuated more than 77,000 Afghans to this country. The desperate images of those evacuations — mothers handing their children over fences, people clinging to the wheels of planes — were seared into our conscience. Ultimately, refugees were sent to eight U.S. military bases, where they waited, sometimes for months, before being relocated to a majority of U.S. states (California and Virginia settled more than any other).
Those who risked their lives to escape had worked with the American military, and across public and private sectors, to promote and uphold freedom and human rights. Among them were many Afghan women: community leaders and human rights defenders, activists, journalists, policymakers and public officials. Few of these women wanted to leave, but staying would have meant arrests, reprisals and even death at the hands of the Taliban.
The evacuees were brought to the U.S. through a humanitarian parole program designed to provide refuge quickly to people under threat — but this program is temporary. It expires, starting this July. Without congressional action, Afghan evacuees will be required to individually apply for asylum or for a special immigrant visa (applicable for those Afghans who aided the U.S. government abroad). In the last 20 months, less than 5,000 of these applications have been approved . With a back-logged asylum system that can result in years-long delays, the vast majority of evacuees will end up in limbo. They could lose their work authorization and be at risk of prosecution and deportation.
But returning to Afghanistan is simply not possible. The Taliban are actively searching for those who aided the U.S. mission there, and women’s rights and freedoms have been dramatically and brutally curtailed.
Congress must consider the current situation in Afghanistan in light of ever-increasing draconian restrictions on women’s rights and freedom, and the escalating persecution of women. Today, adolescent girls in Afghanistan are banned from secondary schools, and women are barred from universities. Women are excluded from public office, the workplace, using gyms, public bathhouses and parks. They have been banned from participating in the civic, economic and cultural life of the country.
Around the world, other nations have already re-committed to the Afghan refugees living within their borders, and especially to Afghan women. Sweden and Denmark, for example, have both offered protection to all Afghan women and girls who are currently residing in their countries. In December 2022, the Swedish Migration Agency announced that given the dire situation facing Afghan women and girls, all asylum-seeking applicants from this group would be granted refugee status and a three-year residence permit . Likewise, the Denmark Refugee Appeals Board made the same decision to approve asylum applications “solely based on gender” due to the “worsening conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan.”
In the United States, asylum or refugee eligibility is determined by fear of persecution on the basis of one (or more) of five criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Many Afghans meet at least one of these. Afghan women’s persecution due to their gender ought to be considered under the category of a “particular social group,” and perhaps explicitly adopted as a new criterion for asylum in the future. Indeed, the UN Human Rights Office states that the Taliban’s discriminatory policies “constitute a collective punishment of women and girls, grounded on gender-based bias and harmful practices.”
The Afghan Adjustment Act has bipartisan support from both chambers of Congress, though some members raised security concerns last year, derailing its passage. At the end of December, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), speaking on behalf of a bipartisan group of senators, veterans from Afghanistan, and former U.S. ambassadors to Afghanistan, addressed that concern directly. He said that this legislation “furthers the national security of the United States.” And that its passage is “a moral imperative.” The passing of this legislation would also be consistent with previous congressional efforts to assist refugees, including giving permanent residency to refugees fleeing Cuba and the Vietnam War.
International Women’s Day was established more than 110 years ago in the U.S., in part to protest unequal rights for women. Today Afghanistan is the global zenith point of discrimination and danger for women. By letting humanitarian parole status lapse without passing the Afghan Adjustment Act, Congress will be pressing its hand down on the scale of injustice.
Afghan women have begun to rebuild their lives here, and their noble efforts underpinned the U.S. mission in Afghanistan for 20 years. We implore the U.S. to protect Afghan women and all Afghan evacuees, so they might secure their futures.
