“If you succeed and escape, you arrive in neighboring countries. But then you have to make the tough passage to Europe through mountains and smuggling routes — that’s very dangerous and very difficult. Women are more vulnerable, so they rarely travel on foot. The majority of Afghans who come to the EU are men,” he said. It’s mostly Afghan men who undertake the treacherous journeys to Europe, and men who wait years to seek family reunification with their wives and children.
Activists also point out that the data of a single month doesn’t indicate that the decision to grant asylum to Afghan women and girls led to an increase in overall numbers. In Switzerland in particular, fewer women applied for asylum after the policy was adopted than before — just over 700 in 2023 compared to 809 in 2022.
Lionel Walter, a spokesperson for the Swiss Refugee Council, similarly said he could safely deny the existence of any pull factor so far. “The vast majority of Afghan women in exile are already with their families. Few, if any, ever travel alone,” he said. Additionally, “two-thirds of those who applied between October 2022 and September 2023 were single” and couldn’t claim a right to family reunification.
The ruling also only applies to Afghan women and girls who are physically present in an EU nation — not to those in a third country, such as Iran or Pakistan.
Moreover, other provisions like the Dublin Regulation, which determines the EU country where an asylum request should be processed, guard against secondary migration, Eva Singer of the Danish Refugee Council said. If the authorities found out that an Afghan woman already sought asylum in an EU nation, for example, “they would be returned according to Dublin rules.”
However, in mid-October, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote a letter to the bloc’s national leaders, asking them to explore “return hubs,” citing Italy’s deal with Albania as a model. And this has called many things into question. According to Dr. Alema Alema of German NGO ProAsyl, as the EU strengthens border controls under the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), “reforms could change the practice of granting asylum to Afghan women.”
Overall, there’s no denying that the number of Afghan asylum seekers have gone up as conflict has gripped their country and NATO allies left the reins to the Taliban. But with the oppression they’re under, Afghan women perhaps make clearest case for protection. And yet, activists now fear European governments will come under pressure from the populist right and mull third country repatriation for all asylum seekers — including Afghan women.
