Malala calls on Pakistan to stop deporting 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 concerning that Pakistan is forcing Afghan refugees based in Pakistan to return to Afghanistan, and I am deeply concerned about women and girls,” the activist, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, told 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 given the bleak future they face in Afghanistan,” she added.
Speaking to AFP on her birthday, recognised by the UN as Malala Day, the activist addressed 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 sat down for talks in Doha for the first time since the latter came to power, but without the presence of women.
“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,” Malala said.
Malala also called for an “urgent” ceasefire in the Gaza war.
“It’s horrible to see how many schools have been bombed in Gaza, even most recently four schools,” she added, referring to the four schools that were hit by Israeli airstrikes this week.
According to the Education Ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, 85 percent of schools in the territory are out of service because of the war.
“This is deeply concerning because we know that children have no future when they live in war, when their schools and homes are destroyed,” Malala said.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which coordinates almost all aid in Gaza, said it used more than half of its pre-war budget to fund education.