Drimonis: a Canadian initiative helps educate Afghan women

Article content

When Montreal immigration lawyer Gabrielle Thiboutot was starting her career in 2021, thousands of kilometers away in Afghanistan, women her age were deprived of one.

After Kabul fell to the Taliban, 20 years of progress suddenly undone. “I had just started as an immigration lawyer,” says Thiboutot, “and suddenly we were inundated with messages from desperate people trying to get out.”

Article content

Article content

Under the Taliban, the rights of women and girls were eliminated. Girls over 12 were prohibited from attending school; Educated women risked arrest, torture, and death.

Deeply concerned, Thiboutot felt compelled to act. She started working with For the refugees, a non-profit founded in 2016 by three Montreal lawyers, and would soon meet Sooriya, a women’s rights activist, journalist and lawyer who had fled Kabul after the Taliban resurgence. She “she was about my age and had a target on her back.”

Thiboutot, 27, has since been heavily involved in For the Refugees’ Resilient futures program, which aims to provide eligible Afghan women a path to security through post-secondary education opportunities in Canada. Sooriya will be the first person to be helped by the initiative. “I contacted a professor at the University of Ottawa,” says Thiboutot, “and was able to gain admission to the university on a partial scholarship.” What started as a one-woman effort eventually expanded to seven.

“We kept knocking on doors and were able to get 15 scholarships worth $500,000,” he says. Since For the Refugees expects even more women, it needs to raise money to sponsor them and cover their tuition and living expenses. The first cohort arrives in September, from all over the world.but aAs international students, you must have between $25,000 and $30,000 for your studies before being admitted to Canada. Donations to the Resilient Futures campaign which launched this week can be made directly on the website.

Article content

Among the seven women there is a doctor and an engineer. and “Fátima”, who is pursuing a master’s degree in international public policy. She spoke to me on condition of anonymity because her five younger siblings are still at home. Her parents, strong defenders of women’s education, have been kidnapped and she does not know her whereabouts.

Fátima appreciates the solidarity. “It surprises me that while our own compatriots are trying to harm us, people who don’t know us, from other corners of the world, rise up to help us,” she says. “That’s called humanity.”

With billions invested in Afghan development efforts over 20 years (roughly between the US-led invasion and the international withdrawal in 2020), Canada’s presence and commitment opened the door to new opportunities for women. The return of the Taliban to power erased that progress. For the refugees She wants Ottawa to create a policy to help educate Afghan women here that would expand her legacy. “We have a moral obligation to help them,” says Thiboutot. “We invested so much in that country and we just left?”

Article content

He says he admires the resilience of women. “Everyone is teaching women at home online because they know that the gender gap will only grow as long as the Taliban remain in power.”

Fatima, 24, tells me she can’t wait to return home. “The day the Taliban leaves,” she says, “the next day I will return. “All the Afghans I know are waiting for that day to return to our country.” In the meantime, education is essential. “We don’t want fancy clothes; We can survive in a tent. But we want an education. Without it, it is not possible to move forward.”

For Thiboutot, who has dedicated almost three years to this project, the campaign is a celebration. Finally everything came together.

“I hope that if one day I find myself in that kind of situation, where I am denied my human rights, other women will help me too.”

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal journalist and author of We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants and Belonging to Canada. She can be contacted at X. @toulastake

Article content

Article content