Peshawar: (TNN), On May 1, a small but powerful moment of global solidarity took place in São Paulo. The first group of 18 Afghan refugees—many of them women and children—arrived in Brazil from Pakistan, marking the start of a humanitarian initiative that aims to welcome up to 500 Afghan refugees by 2025. Brazil, a country thousands of miles from Kabul, has stepped forward with a message the world desperately needs to hear: Afghan lives, and particularly Afghan women’s futures, are worth protecting.
This move stands in stark contrast to a devastating development quietly unfolding elsewhere: more than 120 Afghan women are about to lose their USAID-funded university scholarships that allowed them to study in countries like Qatar and Oman. These students, who escaped Taliban rule and found hope through education, are now at risk of losing everything again—this time not to the Taliban, but to administrative and political neglect.
Since the Taliban seized control in 2021, Afghan women have been systematically erased from public life. Girls have been barred from attending school beyond grade six. According to the United Nations, at least 1.4 million girls have been denied secondary education, and over 100,000 women blocked from post-secondary institutions.
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Brazil’s decision to welcome Afghan refugees, especially women, is a vital act of leadership in a world where too many have looked away. Other countries have made efforts—Canada, for example, has resettled more than 54,700 Afghans since the fall of Kabul—but the scale of the crisis demands more than isolated acts of compassion.
What we are witnessing is not just a refugee crisis or an education emergency. It is a gender apartheid, a systematic dismantling of women’s rights in real time. Every canceled scholarship, every closed school gate, every blocked visa is a step further into darkness for Afghan women.
The international community must do more. That includes:
1- Expanding humanitarian corridors like Brazil’s.
2- Restoring and protecting educational pathways for Afghan women, including through emergency scholarships, digital universities, and academic sponsorships.
3- Applying consistent diplomatic pressure on the Taliban tied directly to gender-based rights violations.
Brazil has offered a glimmer of hope. But hope must be sustained with action, not just symbolic gestures. As 120 young Afghan women face the collapse of their educational dreams, and millions more remain trapped under Taliban rule, the world must ask: if Brazil can take bold steps, why can’t others?
Afghan women believed the world when it told them their rights mattered. It is time to prove that wasn’t a lie.
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