Afghan Women and Girl's Survival Fund

With your support, MADRE and our partners in Afghanistan have made progress for women and girls’ rights. In January, we submitted documentation to the Gender Apartheid Inquiry—a first-of-its-kind investigation into the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran—shedding light on what women, girls, and/including LGBTQIA+ people in Afghanistan continue to face. The Gender Apartheid Inquiry is an examination of the situation of women in Afghanistan and Iran conducted by a U.K. Parliamentary Panel and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, and aims to identify practical and meaningful steps to address rights violations and crimes against women and girls within existing legal frameworks, while also exploring how these acts fit into the concept of gender apartheid.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has committed human rights violations and alleged crimes against women, girls, and/including LGBTQIA+ people in an effort to enforce an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination. Our submission calls for an inclusive definition of gender apartheid that would make visible longstanding discrimination that women, girls, and/including LGBTQIA+ people face acutely when it is enforced through crimes as part of such regimes.

When you support MADRE, you join us in combating discrimination to create policies for lasting change. We appreciate your continued generosity.

MADRE is grateful for your generous support towards our Afghan Women’s and Girls’ Fund. Since the Taliban’s violent takeover of Afghanistan in August of 2021, we have built a coordinated and feminist humanitarian response among Afghan women’s groups and international feminist organizations that has sustained Afghan communities and strengthened the capacity of local women’s organizations to respond to crisis. 

MADRE channeled resources to Afghan women activists, women/human rights defenders, and survivors of violence to support their urgent security, protection, and relocation needs. With your generosity thus far, we have provided 132 emergency grants totaling $1.5 million.

MADRE also mitigated gaps in international humanitarian response by funding livelihood support, including for clandestine women-led businesses affected by economic collapse and the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s movements and economic autonomy. Notably, MADRE and a local partner collaborated to provide grants to women-led small businesses in four provinces across Afghanistan to restart and enhance their operations. The businesses your support sustains range from agricultural and livestock production to the manufacturing of leather goods. By providing support for reopening and expansion, these businesses offered income-generating opportunities through direct employment of more than 50 Afghan women and training in various skills to over 70 women. In two rounds of MADRE’s grantmaking, our support has resulted in the reopening of ten Afghan small businesses and created employment opportunities for over 200 women. 

In September 2022, we had a partial victory when the US government announced that half of the US-held Afghan assets, $3.5 billion, would be released to the Afghan people through an independent trust based in Switzerland. MADRE will continue to advocate for the release of the entirety of Afghanistan’s reserves, as well as for this trust to operate independently of US or Taliban influence. 

With your support, MADRE bolstered grassroots women’s organizing, provided vital humanitarian aid, and facilitated evacuation and relocation to safety, reaching over 20,000 women, girls, and community members, in country and in exile. Together, we resourced networks of Afghan women-led movements and will continue to center the voices of directly impacted communities.