The Diplomat
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has organised the Afghan Women’s Summit ‘HearUs’, a networking platform to address the needs of women who have arrived in Europe and those who have stayed behind, for next Monday 28th in Madrid.
The aim of the summit is for Afghan women, representatives of European institutions and the United Nations, Spanish politicians and politicians, Spanish businesswomen and businessmen and civil society organisations to reach a consensus on a series of measures aimed at facilitating their professional integration in the host countries, ensuring that their opinion is taken into account in humanitarian response programmes and ensuring their active participation in the Women, Peace and Security agenda.
The department headed by José Manuel Albares points out that the current crisis of Afghan women is the main focus and reason for this project, their experience in exile and the challenges they face in integrating into Western societies can be the starting point for a global asylum system, capable of taking in other cases of exiled women in the future.
The summit is scheduled to be opened by Minister Albares and closed by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Ángeles Moreno, and the Secretary of State for Migration, Jesús Javier Perea.
Participants included the Secretary General of the Alliance of Civilisations, Miguel Ángel Moratinos; State Secretary for International Cooperation, PIlar Cancela; representatives of the European External Action Service, the UN and NATO, as well as some of the Afghan women who left the country after the arrival of the Taliban, such as Nilofar Bayat, lawyer and former captain of Afghanistan’s Paralympic basketball team; Sima Samar, human rights activist and former Minister of Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan; and Khadija Zahra Ahmadi, former mayor of Nili (Afghanistan).
