Afghanistan's all-girls robotics team wants to flee the Taliban and come to Canada

TORONTO -

An all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan is pleading to come to Canada to escape Taliban rule, which has reportedly already started to clamp down on the rights of women and girls.

Human rights lawyer Kimberley Motley has taken up their cause and says that the 25-member team is terrified for the future.

“The main thing is that the girls are protected,” Motley told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday. “We’re concerned about their security.”

The team, known as the Afghan Dreamers, is made up of approximately 25 girls between the ages 12 and 18 in the city of Herat. Their mentors overcame war, terrorism and gender discrimination to emerge as a symbol of a new Afghanistan, one that champions girls’ education.

In the team’s hometown, women have posted on Twitter that they were allegedly turned away from universities by Taliban forces, who said only men can enter now.

“It’s all about protecting them moving forward and making sure they’re in a place where they still have the freedom they deserve – the freedom to be educated, the freedom of movement, the freedom to healthcare,” Charlotte, North Carolina-based Motley said.

“These are basic human rights these girls have known their whole lives because of our international intervention in Afghanistan,” Motley said, adding the international community has to make sure that the rights of the team and those of all girls in Afghanistan are protected.

There are concerns that the Taliban, which took control of Afghanistan on Sunday, is plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis that’s particularly dangerous for the 14 million women and girls who live there.

Toronto-based Asma Faizi, president of the Afghan Women’s Organization, told CTV News on Wednesday that girls and women in Afghanistan are already facing Taliban restrictions.

Girls’ schools are being burnt down, or closed, and women are being turned away from universities, she said. They are also being sent home from work.

The Taliban are “trying to rebrand themselves as being different and new and changed, but in terms of practice and what we’re seeing already on the ground, it seems as if they’re reverting back to old ways,” said Faizi, who also works as a lawyer.

She warned that girls and women could have their movement restricted, be barred from going to school, be beaten and stoned to death as they were when the Taliban was in power in the 1990s.

“We’re starting to see this already happen in some of the other provinces the Taliban have taken over,” Faizi said.

She said the situation will be particularly difficult for the girls and women who haven’t lived under the Taliban before.

“Their future is very uncertain,” Faizi said.

“It’s important for us to make sure their voices continue to be heard,” she said, urging people to tell their MPs they’re concerned about the situation.

Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning woman who survived being shot by the Taliban in Pakistan, spoke out about the plight of Afghan women and girls in an opinion piece published in the New York Times on Aug. 17.

“Afghan girls and young women are once again where I have been — in despair over the thought that they might never be allowed to see a classroom or hold a book again,” Yousafzai wrote. “Some members of the Taliban say they will not deny women and girls education or the right to work. But given the Taliban’s history of violently suppressing women’s rights, Afghan women’s fears are real."

Yousafzai, who graduated from Oxford University in 2020, also said that she’d heard reports of females being turned away from universities and workplaces in Afghanistan.

“In this critical moment we must listen to the voices of Afghan women and girls,” Yousafzai wrote. “They are asking for protection, for education, for the freedom and the future they were promised. We cannot continue to fail them. We have no time to spare.” 

Motley also urged action and said she’s skeptical of Taliban claims that they’re allowing the safe passage of people.

 Women are being turned away from colleges, workplaces and their own businesses, she said.

 There have also been reports that women are no longer able to leave their homes without a Taliban-required “mahram,” or male guardian.

“If the government wants legitimacy, they need to take control of this and make sure women are protected,” she said.

Canada has said it has no plans to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s government.