Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Pakistani Malala Yousafzai called on Pakistan in an interview with AFP to abandon its policy of deporting undocumented Afghans, in particular to protect women and girls from the Taliban.
“It is very worrying that Pakistan is forcing Afghan refugees to return to Afghanistan. I am very worried about women and girls,” the 27-year-old, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her fight for girls’ right to education, said on Friday.
Malala was 15 years old when, on October 9, 2012, members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) stormed her bus home from school and shot her in the head for daring to campaign for girls’ education in her northwestern valley of Swat.
Emergency treated in the UK, she became a global symbol of resistance to religious extremism and a voice for girls deprived of education, and in 2014 the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner in history.
Despite extending the stay of Afghan refugees in Pakistan by one year, the Pakistani government warned this week that it would continue to deport undocumented migrants.
More than 600,000 Afghans have already fled neighbouring Pakistan since Islamabad last year ordered undocumented migrants to leave or face arrest.
Human rights activists have warned that some people returned to Afghanistan risk persecution by the Taliban.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban government, with its austere interpretation of Islam, has continued to roll back the rights of Afghan women. High schools and universities have closed their doors to women, as have parks, gyms and hammams.
“A lot of these girls in Pakistan were studying, they were in school, these women were working,” Malala explained.
“I hope Pakistan will reverse its policy and protect girls and women, especially given the bleak future that awaits them in Afghanistan,” she added.
“I can’t believe I’m living in a time where girls have been deprived of education for over three years,” she said. It’s a “shocking” situation.
The Malala Fund is campaigning for the United Nations to expand its definition of crimes against humanity to include “gender apartheid,” the term the UN uses to describe the situation in Afghanistan.
“Protecting” children in Gaza
In early July, the United Nations and the Taliban began talks in Doha, Qatar, for the first time since their return to power.
But the Taliban set their conditions: the discussions were held without women present.
“International leaders need to understand that when they sit with the Taliban and exclude women and girls, they are doing the Taliban a favor,” Malala said.
She calls on “countries, including Canada and France, which have a feminist foreign policy, to condemn” the Doha discussions.
Malala also called for an “urgent” ceasefire in the war in Gaza. “It is horrific to see how many schools have been bombed.”
According to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 percent of schools in the territory can no longer operate.
“This is very worrying because we know that children have no future when they live in war, when their schools and homes are destroyed,” Malala said.
It calls for support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which coordinates almost all aid to Gaza and which devoted more than half of its budget before the war to education.
But the agency has faced funding problems since several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, suspended aid earlier this year amid Israeli accusations that employees were involved in the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
“I hope that all countries will provide help and support because these are innocent people and civilians who need to be protected,” Malala pleaded.