When Kabul fell on 15 August 2021, it was not only photos of men in beards with guns that filled the international news media, but photos of international planes full of men too. Where were all the women?

Since the fall of Kabul, women’s human rights defenders have reported increased intimidation, harassment, and rape. According to UN Women, “Women are systematically excluded from public and political life and restricted in their access to education, humanitarian assistance, employment, justice, and health services.” The erosion of women’s health has made childbirth in many ways a death sentence.

In the twenty years before the fall of Kabul, the Australian Government provided AUD$1.6 billion dollars in development and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, which included a focus on women’s education, health, and participation and in preventing violence against women.

Experience of non-combatant evacuations from Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo showed that local women’s rights defenders were going to be left behind. This could not be allowed to happen again.

Umbrella bodies like the Australian Council for International Development were well placed to coordinate with their member Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) who provided humanitarian and development assistance on the ground in Afghanistan. These NGOs helped to identify individuals who worked on women’s rights and were prioritised for evacuation to Australia. Similarly, groups who are part of the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security, such as the Monash Gender Peace and Security Centre, had partners on the ground who had been extremely active in this space, were now incredibly vulnerable, and had close ties with Australia.

Australian civil society advocates were able to encourage emergency visas for these Afghans, providing exactly the required information to the right parliamentarians, ministers, office bearers, and bureaucrats. They helped them get to safety by connecting them to people on the ground who could get them into airports or across land borders. But there are a range of systemic barriers affecting a women’s escape from the Taliban.

While international security forces were still in Kabul, and Afghan men were struggling to get into the airport to get on emergency evacuation flights, female-headed households stood no chance at entry because security forces were requiring passports as proof of ID. For years in Afghanistan, women were included on a man’s passport. When that law changed, they still needed a man’s permission to apply for a passport. It was only relatively recently that women could independently apply for their own passports, so not many had them.

These days it is virtually impossible to get an Afghan passport. In practice, you need to go through a passport broker, and prices are based on an open market system; the higher the demand, the higher the price. On top of this, the Taliban constantly changes their policies on who will be allowed passports. For example, at present it is nearly impossible to get them for children. The current price for a passport in Kabul is US$2,000 per person. At present, 100 percent of women-headed households in Afghanistan do not even have enough food to eat.

Other reasons women were unable to get into the airport include the fact that they overwhelmingly are the ones with caretaking responsibilities. Even if a women’s paid work might put her and the family at risk, she will still likely have children and elderly parents to take along with her, and that chaotic environment was simply not one that vulnerable people could physically endure.

Home Affairs is now well and truly overloaded with hundreds of thousands of applications from Afghans for 70,000 refugee places from around the whole world. But the system lacks a functional mechanism to prioritise and action extremely high-risk cases that meet the government’s own priority processing criteria.

The case of one women’s rights defender, who was the program manager of a publicly successful women’s rights program, took so long waiting for an Australian visa that arrangements ended up being made to send her to Germany. But she worked for an international NGO on a project funded by an Australian NGO, accredited by the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission. Her risk was significantly compounded by the fact that she also happened to be married to the deputy chief of the Afghan Air Force, who had even been on official visits to Australia. The family even shared photos of him and the Vice Chief of Defence at Russell Offices. But the Australian Government simply would not move on this woman’s visa. Her husband had been evacuated, but she was left behind.

Since the fall of Kabul, a network of volunteers, now formalised under the NGO named Azadi-e Zan (loosely translating to Free Woman), have helped evacuate over 300 Afghan women’s rights defenders and their families to final destinations of safety in Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Brazil, Canada, and the US. But there are hundreds more on the list needing help, and many more beyond that.

The list includes a female senator with physical disabilities; a provincial head of the Afghan equivalent of the Office for Women; a university law professor who worked on divorce cases for women escaping talibs; a group of women who ran education programs, including with the Asia Foundation and Carnegie Fund; the last Board Member of the Afghan Women’s Network to leave the country, and many more. All these families meet several of the government’s stated priority processing criteria. The offices of several relevant ministers, including the Minister for Women, are aware of the cases, but there is still no action.

In the absence of action on the cases of individual Afghan women’s rights defenders, last month Rebekha Sharkie MP hosted an event at Parliament House in Canberra that was attended by parliamentarians from across the political spectrum. Held on Valentine’s Day, the event called for the government to “have a heart” for Afghan women’s rights defenders and highlighted a skilled migrant proposal that could bring these women and their families to safety – as skilled migrants on the existing 186 skilled migrant visa through a labour agreement between an employer and the government.

A scheme like this would mean these incredibly skilled Afghans could be moved into jobs where the government has identified skills shortages, while bringing women’s rights defenders and their families to safety. They could do this by integrating them into the community as quickly as possible, with all the benefits that come with secure employment, and without affecting the government’s cap on refugee numbers. Such a scheme would require philanthropic and corporate partnerships to remediate the costs associated with the visa, evacuation, and relocation of the women and their families. Business partnerships would also be needed with employers to provide two-year, full-time contracts to refugees. The scheme is targeting employers in construction, hospitality, mining, health support (aged care and disability support), and legal adjacent (admin, paralegal etc) sectors.

Hopefully, with targeted work on individual cases, and a skilled migrant scheme, Australia will again see better movement on the cases of Afghan women’s rights defenders needing to flee the Taliban. That would make a very happy International Women’s Day indeed.

Susan Hutchinson has spent decades working to advance the women, peace and security agenda. She has experience in the Australian Army, Department of Defence, and a range of Non Government Organisations. She is currently undertaking a PhD in International Relations at the Australian National University. Susan is also the architect of the ‘prosecute; don’t perpetrate’ campaign to help end impunity for conflict related sexual violence; and the Executive Director of Azadi-e Zan, working to help Afghan human rights defenders since the fall of Kabul.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.