Calls for France to recognise all Afghan women and girls as refugees

Activists in France have called on the government to systematically grant asylum to women and girls fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan, after the first all-female group of evacuees arrived in Paris. France flew five women over this week to apply for refugee status, but many thousands more are still seeking a safe haven.

The five women, accompanied by three of their children, landed at Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday on a flight from Pakistan, where they had fled before seeking a permanent refuge.

Before going into exile, they worked as academics, journalists, teachers or consultants for NGOs.

"In Afghanistan we didn't have the right to study or work. All the progress that we had made in the last 20 years ended in one night," said Naveen Hashim, a researcher in socioeconomics who advised the Afghan government before Taliban fighters overthrew it in August 2021. 

The Taliban threatened to kill her, and the threats continued once she reached Pakistan, Hashim told RFI at the airport.

"There was uncertainty, we didn't have hope, a future, any kind of project... I am sure I will get many opportunities in France. So I will start my life, I'll start my job here. And I'm happy because I'm free here."

Refugees in limbo

More than 1.6 million people have fled Afghanistan in the past two years, thousands of them women and girls stripped of fundamental rights under the Taliban's policies.

Most remain in limbo in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, where one million and 600,000 Afghans have fled respectively, according to the United Nations.

France received some 39,000 requests for asylum from Afghan nationals between 2021 and mid-2023.

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Last year alone over 17,000 Afghans filed for asylum in France, around 23 percent of them women, show figures from French refugee agency Ofpra. Around 11,600 were granted refugee status.

But those who hope to apply for asylum in France must first travel there to submit their claim, which means obtaining a visa from a French consulate.

So far the process has proved slow. The women who arrived this week are among the first to be granted papers by French authorities in Pakistan.

'Feminist asylum policy'

Didier Leschi, director of the French Office of Immigration and Integration, says that France is focusing on bringing over women threatened by the Taliban because they held prominent positions in Afghan society or had close contact with Westerners.

Airlifts like this week's are "likely to be repeated" for other Afghan women in Pakistan who fit that profile, he told French news agency AFP.

French authorities in Pakistan now appear to be treating the cases of Afghan women as a priority, according to Solène Chalvon Fioriti, co-founder of Accueillir les Afghanes ("Welcome Afghan Women"). The asylum NGO, which was involved in efforts to bring the group of five to France this week, has previously complained of inaction by the French government.

But it's not yet clear whether the change is "more than symbolic", Chalvon Fioriti told RFI's Jelena Tomic. 

"There are lots of girls on their own, lots of female students – our group alone has registered several hundred. So we hope that today is the beginning of a real feminist asylum policy that welcomes Afghan women on the grounds of their gender alone."

Safe route to France

So far, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are the only EU countries to say they will grant refugee status to Afghan women and girls based solely on gender. 

"We believe that the situation for women in Afghanistan entails a violation of their basic human rights, to the point that it must be considered persecution," said Carl Bexelius, director of legal affairs at the Swedish Migration Agency, when Sweden became the first to adopt the policy in December 2022.

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But even if France were to follow suit, the problem would still remain of getting to the country to file for asylum in the first place.

France Terre d'Asile ("France Land of Asylum"), an NGO that provides accommodation and services to Afghan asylum seekers, is calling for an official process to be put in place to offer safe routes for displaced women to reach France.

"It's very clear that what we need now is a formal commitment from the authorities that goes further than welcoming a few women," the head of the organisation, Delphine Rouilleault, told RFI.

Stressing the precarious situation that female refugees face in Pakistan, she urged France to establish a system to support Afghan women throughout the process of getting a visa in Pakistan to rebuilding their lives in France.

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Journalist Nasrin Shirzad fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan with her family over a year ago, and has yet to receive refugee status.

"We can never stay here because my children can't have access to education," she told RFI's correspondent Sonia Ghezali. "We don't have the right to send them to school. We can't work either, so we don't have any income out here."

Shirzad has applied for a French visa, she says – so far with no response.