Afghan women prosecutors find asylum in Spain

Pushing her son on a swing at a playground on a sunny winter's day in Madrid, former Afghan prosecutor Obaida Sharar expresses relief that she found asylum in Spain after fleeing Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban took over.

Sharar, who arrived in Madrid with her family, is one of 19 female prosecutors to have found asylum in the country after being left in limbo in Pakistan without official refugee status for up to a year after the Taliban's return to power. She feels selfish being happy while her fellow women suffer, she said. "Most Afghan women and girls that remain in Afghanistan don't have the right to study, to have a social life or even go to a beauty salon,"

Sharar said. "I cannot be happy."

Women's freedoms in her home country were abruptly curtailed in 2021 with the arrival of the Taliban government. The Taliban administration has banned most female aid workers and last year stopped women and girls from attending high school and university.

Sharar's work and that of her female peers while they lived in Afghanistan was dangerous. Female judges and prosecutors were threatened and became the target of revenge attacks as they undertook work overseeing the trial and conviction of men accused of gender crimes, including rape and murder. She was part of a group of 32 women judges and prosecutors that left Afghanistan only to be stuck in Pakistan for up to a year trying to find asylum.

A prosecutor, who gave only her initials as S.M. due to fears over her safety and who specialised in gender violence and violence against children said, "I was the only female prosecutor in the province... I received threats from Taliban members and the criminals who I had sent to prison."

Now she and her family are also in Spain. Many of the women have said they felt abandoned

Most Afghan women and girls that remain in Afghanistan don’t have the right to study, to have a social life or even go to a beauty salon. I cannot be happy.”

Obaida Sharar

Former Afghan prosecutor

I was the only female prosecutor in the province... I received threats from Taliban members and the criminals who I had sent to prison.”

S. M.

Former prosecutor

by Western governments and international organisations.

Ignacio Rodriguez, a Spanish lawyer and president of a nongovernmental organisation which defends prosecuted lawyers, said the women had been held up as symbols of democratic success only to be discarded.