Afghans Fearing Taliban Retaliation Have Few Options For Safety:Amnesty Internation

On August 24, 2021, families board a United States Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan:Photo Courtesy:US Marine Corps

Those left behind in Afghanistan face huge challenge to seeking safety outside the country, Amnesty International said on October 20, nearly two months after airlift operations ceased. In an advocacy briefing, the organisation discusses how neighbouring nations have closed their borders to Afghans without travel documents, forcing many to make illegal crossings. Rather than providing protection to people who enter their country in this manner, as required by international law, countries across Europe and Central Asia have subjected Afghans to illegal detention, deportation, and pushbacks.

Amnesty International is urging all governments to uphold their obligations to protect people facing serious human rights violations by immediately stopping all deportations or returns to Afghanistan and ensuring fair asylum proceedings. They should also take immediate steps to provide safe passage for Afghans in danger of being targeted by the Taliban, such as lowering travel documentation requirements and providing humanitarian visas to those most vulnerable.

Francesca Pizzutelli, Head of Amnesty International’s Refugees and Migrants’ Rights Team said,“We urge all countries to open their borders to Afghans seeking refuge, and to establish targeted resettlement schemes to bring the most at-risk to safety. Governments must offer international protection to new arrivals and to Afghans who are already on their territories, mindful of the international prohibition on non-refoulement.”

Despite the possibility of major human rights atrocities by the Taliban, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan have all barred their borders to Afghans travelling without documents.International Organization for Migration (IOM) figure shows Iranian authorities deported 58,279 undocumented Afghans between August 27 and September 9, 2021, whereas Uzbekistan announced on August 20 that it had returned 150 persons to Afghanistan based on a Taliban accord.

According to Amnesty,the international obligation to maintain borders open for individuals seeking asylum, as well as the non-refoulement obligation, do not just apply to countries that share a land border with Afghanistan. It also refers to nations that Afghans can go to by air or sea, or after crossing borders. To put it another way, it doesn’t differentiate between regular and irregular arrivals.

Despite this, countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia, and Greece have continued to retaliate against Afghans, while Poland has imposed new restrictions that will make it hard for anyone who cross the border illegally to seek refuge in Poland.

Since 19 August, a group of 32 Afghans has been stranded on the Poland-Belarus border after being moved from Poland to Belarus in a suspected pushback without any assessment of their particular protection requirements. The group has been confined in a narrow strip of land on the border by Polish and Belarusian border guards, who have denied them proper shelter, clean water, food, or health care.

The impact of security clearance systems on Afghans seeking refuge was also highlighted by Amnesty International. For example, before Afghans may be considered for evacuation, German officials want them to show themselves to German authorities for security checks — yet Germany currently has no diplomatic representation in Afghanistan. The Biden administration in the United States has indicated that by the end of September 2022, it plans to relocate 95,000 Afghan evacuees. However, there are still concerns regarding how Afghan refugees are treated on US military bases, as well as the detention and transfer of Afghan evacuees who have not passed severe US security screening to third nations.

While the situation in Afghanistan in terms of human rights continues to deteriorate, all countries must take prompt measures to allow women activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and members of marginalised ethnic or religious minorities to leave the country. They must provide international protection to both new arrivals and Afghans already on their soil, as well as support countries in the region in ensuring Afghans’ rights when they travel there.

Francesca Pizzutelli added,”the lives of thousands of women and men who had worked to promote and defend human rights, gender equality, rule of law and democratic freedoms in their country are now hanging by a thread.”