'Afghanistan shows why UK foreign policy must prioritise women and girls'

15 August 2023 , 10:38

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Women in Afghanistan have been stripped of various rights since the Taliban swept back to power two years ago (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

Two years on since the disastrously-managed withdrawal of US and UK troops, Afghanistan is not the "country transformed" as described by the Conservative chairman of the Defence Select Committee last month.

Fifteen million people are acutely food insecure, with more than two-thirds of the population depending on humanitarian assistance. The World Food Program has been forced to cut assistance to eight million food-insecure Afghans. Meanwhile, a plague of locusts in the north of the country is threatening to destroy a quarter of this year’s wheat harvest.

Last summer, when I became the first UK politician to visit Afghanistan since the evacuation, on a humanitarian visit with the UN, it was evident that the Taliban’s authoritarian rule was once again especially brutal on women. One young woman denied her university degree told me: “They will do anything to stop us. I am losing hope. We exist but this is not a life.” I was moved to tears by stories of women apparently forced to sell their organs and children to survive.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy has written exclusively for the Mirror (Joseph Raynor/ Nottingham Post)

Over the past 24 months, every aspect of women’s and girls’ lives has been manhandled by Taliban diktat. Afghanistan is the only country on the planet where girls are denied education beyond primary school. Women have been surgically removed from public life, with bans on most forms of employment, including most recently the dismissal of women working in childcare and the closure of all beauty salons.

Draconian travel restrictions, requiring male chaperones, have been imposed. The Taliban have barred women from playing sport. The ban on women working for international organisations and the UN has been particularly pernicious, cutting women and girls off from vital humanitarian assistance in a country that is starving.

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Women who protest against these measures are targeted with violent crackdowns and torture. The Taliban’s decimation of the media and imprisonment of journalists mean women’s stories are rarely told. It is up to the international community to stand with women and girls in the face of the Taliban’s abuses, not look the other way.

(Defence Select Committee) chairman Tobias Ellwood has rightly apologised for handing a propaganda victory to the Taliban. However, his rhetoric suggesting a sea-change in the country has been matched by his Government’s inaction. Instead of providing leadership on the international stage over the acute humanitarian crisis the Afghan people are still suffering, the Conservative Government is acting as though no such crisis exists.

There is no serious plan to work multilaterally with our partners to fix it and no UK leadership on the humanitarian challenges. The Prime Minister has so far ignored the campaign group Action for Afghanistan’s call for a Global Summit for Afghan Women and Girls, to seek collective action from governments around the world. Operation Warm Welcome – the scheme set up to provide resettlement for Afghans who worked closely with the British military and government – has become Operation Cold Shoulder.

Last month, 8,000 Afghan refugees in the UK were told that they will be forced out of temporary accommodation by the end of the summer. Meanwhile, 4,300 Afghans eligible for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) – many of whom supported UK troops at huge personal risk – are still stuck in a dangerous limbo.

Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. But it is not unique in being a pocket of desperation where women suffer worse outcomes than men. Women continue to make up the majority of the world’s poor and hungry, as well as bearing the brunt of the climate emergency. The courageous women protesting for freedom in Iran are facing the return of its infamous morality police. Sexual violence continues to be used as a tool of war against women in Ukraine.

Two years on from the evacuation, the international community must refocus its efforts on supporting all of those who have been abandoned in Afghanistan. But it is also right that we prioritise women and girls who are suffering the most. The next Labour government’s foreign and development policy will be proudly feminist, recognising both the structures that hold women back and the action required for justice.

This is an imperative not just for our policies towards Afghanistan but across the world. The next Labour Government will start by organising a Global Summit for Afghan Women and Girls – we owe it to the women I met in Kabul.

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David Lammy