Global Number of Afghan Refugees Growing
Global Number of Afghan Refugees Growing
By the late 1980s, some 6 million Afghan refugees had fled as a result of the Soviet occupation of their homeland. Of these, 3 million, mostly from eastern Afghan provinces, went to Pakistan. Another 3 million, mainly from western provinces, fled to the Islamic Republic of Iran. By March 1995, around half had returned home, including large numbers of women.
Many refugee women returning to their devastated country after up to 16 years in Pakistan and Iran need both the means to become self-reliant - usually in the form of income-generating skills - and the opportunity to exercise those skills. But the great majority of Afghan women refugees came from, and are returning to, conservative rural areas, where opposition to the idea of women earning a living is perhaps as strongly entrenched as anywhere in the world.
"For years I thought that I only have to prove myself as a leader of Afghan women and as a good writer," says Safia Siddiqui, manager of a sewing project run by the Danish Committee for Assistance to Afghanistan, (DACAAR) in Peshawar, at the Pakistan end of the Khyber Pass, through which most Afghan refugees arrived after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. "I could not imagine that I would change my mind and devote my life to another cause - that of making Afghan refugee women self-reliant."
When UNHCR and other agencies first began operating programs for Afghan refugees, the idea of singling out refugee women for special training, which would continue to benefit them upon eventual repatriation, was still in its infancy. According to Else Berglund, a social services officer in UNHCR's Peshawar sub-office, much has changed since then. "In the beginning there were lots of funds which were spent without the idea of sustainability. Now, we have realized this and started many income-generating and self-reliance projects."