Those who fled Afghanistan fearing gender apartheid have been forced back to live in a society in which, without a male ‘guardian’, they cannot work or rent a home, leaving them in poverty and open to abuse
S
afia* thought she had finally found safety for herself and her children. After years of violence and hardship at the hands of her husband, a police officer who became a Taliban commander in the western province of Herat, Safia and her two children had fled to Iran in 2018 to start a new life.
There, with the help of other refugee Afghan women, she had started a small clothing business and had built a fragile but dignified life for herself and her family.
Two weeks ago, that all collapsed when Safia and her teenage children were given a deportation notice. They joined hundreds of thousands of other refugees being rounded up and forced back over the border into Afghanistan.
