Malala calls on Pakistan to stop deporting undocumented Afghans

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai has called on Pakistan to stop deporting undocumented Afghans, saying she is particularly concerned about the “bleak future” facing women and girls returned to their country.

“It is deeply disturbing that Pakistan is forcing Afghan refugees based in Pakistan to return to Afghanistan, and I am deeply concerned about the women and girls,” said the activist, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. AFP in an interview on Friday.

Despite extending the residency rights of Afghan refugees with residency permits in Pakistan by one year, Islamabad announced this week that it would deport illegal migrants.

More than 600,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Islamabad last year ordered undocumented migrants to leave or face arrest.

Human rights monitors have warned that some of the children sent to Afghanistan have been persecuted by the Taliban, who came to power in 2021 and have imposed an austere form of Islam, barring girls from higher education and excluding women and girls from public life.

“A lot of these girls in Pakistan were studying, they were in school, these women were working,” said Malala, 27, who grew up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

She was forced to move to the UK after being shot dead, aged just 15, for resisting a ban on girls’ education in her hometown by the Pakistani Taliban.

“I hope Pakistan will change its policy and protect girls and women, especially because of the bleak future they face in Afghanistan,” she added.

“Commitment based on principles”

Talk to AFP On the occasion of her birthday, recognized by the UN as Malala Day, the activist began reflecting on the challenges facing the only country in the world where girls over the age of 12 are excluded from school.

“I can’t believe I’m witnessing a time when girls have been deprived of education for over three years,” she said, adding that while the situation was “shocking,” she “admired the resilience of Afghan activists.”

The Malala Fund is campaigning for the UN to officially expand its definition of crimes against humanity to include “gender apartheid,” a term the UN uses to describe the situation in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the UN and the Taliban met in Doha for talks for the first time since the latter came to power, but without the presence of women.

Malala said the Doha talks had produced a “compromise on the future of women and girls”, calling for a “principled engagement” with the Taliban.

“World leaders need to understand that when they sit down with the Taliban… and exclude women and girls, they are actually doing the Taliban a favor,” she said.

“I also want to call on countries – including Canada and France – that have a feminist foreign policy” to “condemn” discussions like those in Doha, she added.