After fleeing domestic violence and hardship, Safia and her children sought refuge in Iran, establishing a small clothing business. However, they were recently deported back to Afghanistan, where she lives in fear of her violent husband. The deportation of Afghan refugees, including 153,000 women, has surged, many returning to a country experiencing extreme gender-based discrimination. Women are specifically vulnerable, with many, like Safia, facing life in a society where their rights are severely restricted and dangers from a patriarchal system prevail.
Safia thought she had finally found safety for herself and her children. After years of violence and hardship at the hands of her husband, a police officer who became a Taliban commander in the western province of Herat, Safia and her two children had fled to Iran in 2018 to start a new life.
Now back in Herat, Safia lives in daily terror of her husband and his family. I was his second wife. My father forced me to marry him because he had money and power.
Of the estimated 800,000 undocumented Afghan refugees and migrants who were returned from Iran between 1 June and 23 July this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that 153,000 were women.
All have been forcibly returned to a country operating under what is in effect a system of gender apartheid, and where women's rights have been stripped back to the bone.
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