Teaching at a madrassa (Islamic religious school for girls) in a rural province of Afghanistan, before the Taliban takeover. (c) WILPF 2021
Asma’s Story: A Call to Action and Solidarity with Afghan Women
The global community of WILPF joins together with WILPF Afghanistan in mourning the death of Asma,* an Afghan woman, WILPF member, and dedicated human rights and peace activist. Based in Kabul province, Asma dedicated more than 20 years of her life to teaching Afghan girls in secondary school. She was a long-standing member of WILPF, involved since it was first established, and was engaged in multiple projects and activities with WILPF Afghanistan.
She deserves our respect for her many contributions – and her story deserves our attention.
The recent Taliban takeover, and related freezing of Afghanistan’s assets by the United States and IMF, has exacerbated instability, poverty, and hardship in the country. The Taliban has banned girls from attending schools and universities. Female government employees – who represent 25 percent of all government employees in Afghanistan – have been denied the right to work and advised to remain at home and await further instructions. Similarly, nearly 120,000 female teachers have lost their jobs and roughly four million girls are currently out of school.
In addition to these challenges, many women have lost their spouses and ‘breadwinners’ during the last 20 years of war and conflict in Afghanistan. They have been left with orphaned and homeless children to care for in addition to their own children. Now, with their rights severely compromised, these women are in a desperate and dangerous situation, as are the young children attached to them.
Asma was one such woman.
She had been teaching in a girls’ school just before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, earning a monthly salary of $70 USD and solely supporting her children. That changed when the Taliban took power and female teachers were asked not to return to work. She suddenly found herself without employment, and without an income.
Asma’s children asked her daily for food, and for warm clothes as the weather grew colder. But she could not provide these things, nor could she obtain any support from her extended family. Asma, her other family members, and her neighbours were now facing severe economic hardships. No one had enough money to help or lend to others in a substantial way. While Asma was able to borrow some limited funds from her closest friends for a time, this could only go so far. Soon, Asma was left without any means to feed her children.
Frustrated and broken by her poverty, and facing an unknown future for her and her children, Asma took her own life on 20 October 2021.
The routine discrimination, exclusion, abuse, violence, and outright violation of human rights that Afghan women experience daily, and particularly following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, should outrage all of us.
At this very moment, women in Afghanistan – women like Asma – are facing the denial of their basic rights, including the right to education, to work, and to healthcare.
This is wrong.
War and conflict in Afghanistan have contributed to the displacement of millions of women – both within and outside the country – and Afghan women now face a heightened risk of gender-based violence, food insecurity, exposure to trafficking, and other harms.
This is also wrong.
In Afghanistan, barriers to education, gender-based violence, domestic abuse, and forced marriages are among the highest in the world – where women also represent 80 percent of deaths by suicide. This is absolutely unacceptable.
We cannot share Asma’s real name publicly. But we will not remain silent about her story and the countless other women who are facing the same brutal hardships, turmoil, and despair that she faced and tried so hard to overcome.
The international community must take urgent action. Specifically, this action must include ensuring the human rights of women and girls; facilitating urgent funding and economic support to women who are without financial means; supporting a ban on forced marriages; and ensuring girls’ access to education, which is their right.
Asma’s death is more than a tragedy. It’s a call to act and join in solidarity with girls and women in Afghanistan as they seek to overcome their present and devastating realities with an eye to securing their futures.
*Asma is a pseudonym; real and full name has been withheld.
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In our series of blogs about Afghanistan, we are bringing new perspectives and voices to the mainstream narrative told by the media. Read the blog series or visit our webpage dedicated our work on Afghanistan.
Matt Mahmoudi (he/him) is a lecturer, researcher, and organizer. He’s been leading the “Ban the Scan” campaign, Amnesty International’s research and advocacy efforts on banning facial recognition technologies and exposing their uses against racialized communities, from New York City to the occupied Palestinian territories.
More about Hanne Peterson coming soon.
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Diana María Salcedo López holds a degree in Political Science from the National University of Colombia, a Master’s degree in Women’s, Gender and Citizenship Studies from the University of Barcelona, and a Master’s degree in Human Rights, the Rule of Law and Democratisation from the University of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid. A feminist and anti-militarist, she has a solid track record spanning two decades working as a consultant for non-governmental organisations, international cooperation agencies, the United Nations and state bodies in Colombia.
Her work has focused on safeguarding women’s rights, incorporating a gender and intersectional perspective into public policy, strengthening the social fabric amongst women who are victims of the armed conflict, and consolidating local peace-building processes.
She currently serves as director of the Colombian section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (LIMPAL Colombia), where she leads initiatives on issues such as feminist approaches to the energy transition, the protection of women human rights defenders, the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and advocacy in international forums. She also represents the organisation on the Special Women’s Body for Monitoring the Peace Agreement and on the Intersectoral Commission on Security Guarantees for Women Human Rights Defenders and Women Leaders in Colombia.
Desirée Sterner currently serves as President of the Swedish Section (IKFF), a role she has held since 2023. Her engagement with WILPF began at the grassroots level through the local branch in Lund/Malmö during her university years. Desirée brings a deep substantive understanding of WILPF’s core issues, rooted in academic training in gender, peace and security (LSE), war studies (Swedish Defence University), peace and conflict studies, and human rights (Lund University), combined with several years of practical advocacy, movement-building and organisational leadership work in Swedish civil society.
Sylvie Ndongmo, is a Cameroonian peacebuilder, feminist leader, civil society actor and Women, Peace and Security expert with over 30 years of experience in peacebuilding, mediation, and gender equality advocacy. She serves as International President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and Executive Secretary of Women Peace Initiatives. She coordinates the Women and Youth Early Warning Monitoring Room in Cameroon and was recently appointed to the African Union Advisory Panel on Democratic Elections and Governance in Africa. Her work focuses on advancing women’s leadership, conflict prevention, and sustainable peace through feminist, inclusive, and intergenerational approaches.
In response to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its targeted attacks on civil society members, WILPF Afghanistan issued several statements calling on the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan people and ensure that their rights be upheld, including access to aid. The Section also published 100 Untold Stories of War and Peace, a compilation of true stories that highlight the effects of war and militarisation on the region.
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WILPF uses feminist analysis to argue that militarisation is a counter-productive and ill-conceived response to establishing security in the world. The more society becomes militarised, the more violence and injustice are likely to grow locally and worldwide.
Sixteen states are believed to have supplied weapons to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 with the US supplying 74 % of weapons, followed by Russia. Much of this equipment was left behind by the US military and is being used to inflate Taliban’s arsenal. WILPF is calling for better oversight on arms movement, for compensating affected Afghan people and for an end to all militarised systems.
Mobilising men and boys around feminist peace has been one way of deconstructing and redefining masculinities. WILPF shares a feminist analysis on the links between militarism, masculinities, peace and security. We explore opportunities for strengthening activists’ action to build equal partnerships among women and men for gender equality.
WILPF has been working on challenging the prevailing notion of masculinity based on men’s physical and social superiority to, and dominance of, women in Afghanistan. It recognizes that these notions are not representative of all Afghan men, contrary to the publicly prevailing notion.
In WILPF’s view, any process towards establishing peace that has not been partly designed by women remains deficient. Beyond bringing perspectives that encapsulate the views of half of the society and unlike the men only designed processes, women’s true and meaningful participation allows the situation to improve.
In Afghanistan, WILPF has been demanding that women occupy the front seats at the negotiating tables. The experience of the past 20 has shown that women’s presence produces more sustainable solutions when they are empowered and enabled to play a role.
