United Nations – which defends empowerment and gender equality – alongside the international humanitarian agency Care International and Partners, published the call in a report published Thursday which also highlights the main challenges and needs of assistance workers helping the returnees.
THE Genre alert Comes in the middle of a wave of returned to Afghanistan, where the Taliban reigned for four years, implementing many decrees that restrict the rights of women in the economic crisis, climatic shocks and immense humanitarian needs.
Foreigners in a strange country
Since September 2023, more than 2.4 million undocumented Afghan migrants have returned or have been forced to return, from Pakistan and Iran.
Women and girls represent a third of Rapatrians from Iran so far this year, and about half of those who come from Pakistan.
Many arrive in a country in which they have never lived, homeless, income or access to education and health care.
Women and children who returned to Afghanistan are waiting to be seen in a maternity clinic.
A myriad of risks
Like all women and girls in Afghanistan, returnees are faced with increased risks of poverty, early marriage, violence, exploitation and unprecedented restrictions on their rights, movements and freedoms.
“” Vulnerable women and girls arriving with nothing in communities that are already stretched at the point of rupture puts them even more at riskSaid Susan Ferguson, special representative of UN women in the country.
We need a place to stay, a chance to learn and a way to win.
“They are determined to rebuild with dignity, but We need more funding to provide the dedicated support they need And to make sure that humanitarian women are there to reach them. »»
Housing, income and education
The report describes urgent and long -term needs, such as safe and affordable shelters, support for livelihoods and girls’ education.
As a participant said in a discussion group in the province of Nangahar, “we need a place to stay, a chance to learn and a way to win”.
Currently, only 10% of households led by women live in a permanent shelter, almost four in 10 fear expulsion, and all girls are prohibited from frequenting a secondary school.
Impact of help reductions
Although humanitarian women at border points are essential to achieve repatriated women, cuts in foreign aid and movement restrictions are increasingly hindering their efforts.
For example, humanitarian women must be accompanied by a male guardian, or mahramtraveling. However, “financing reductions have strongly eroded the support of Mahram staff in the provinces of Kandahar and Nangarhar, leaving an inconsistent, delayed or absence provision,” said the report.
Funding reductions have seriously weakened the ability of humanitarian organizations to react, and women humanitarian workers at border points report that they are overwhelmed by the number of arrivals and which cannot meet their basic needs.
“In distress, disoriented and hopeless”
“Assisting the volume of arrivals and the difficulties facing women, children and families – many in distress, disoriented and hopeless – left a deep impact on us all by responding to this crisis,” said Graham Davison, director of Care Afghanistan.
He underlined the urgent need for support to provide basic services, safe spaces and protection to women and repatriated.
The report noted that Afghanistan is already faced with one of the most disastrous humanitarian crises in the world, led by decades of conflict, poverty and natural disasters.
While this last wave of returns threatens to push communities already fragile further in crisis, partners have urged the international community to act now to protect the rights of Afghan women and girls and to invest in the humanitarian women who support them.
Arafat Jamal, the United Nations Agency for Refugees (Hcr) Representative in Afghanistan, recently spoke of the push of the Rapatries of Iran.
Save the number of returns
Separately, the international migration organization (Iom) Also called For international support while Afghanistan confronts “one of the greatest return movements in recent history”.
The figures for returnees are on the right track to increase while an additional million Afghans should return from Pakistan following the government’s decision not to extend their stay.
The OIM operates four reception centers in the main border crossings in Afghanistan, notably Islam Qala and Milak with Iran, and Torkham and Spin Boldak with Pakistan.
The United Nations agency calls for additional funding to increase its response to meet growing borders and in the return areas.
Originally published at Almouwatin.com
