The U.S. Department of State announced an initiative to develop and advance the educational, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for women in Afghanistan at a sideline event during the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York.
Sec. of State Antony Blinken launched the Alliance for Afghan Women's Economic Resilience (AWER), a private-public partnership between the DOS and Boston University, on Tuesday, the DOS announced at the time. Leaders from U.S., other nations, the private sector, business and civil society, gathered with Afghan women entrepreneurs at the launch and participated in a panel discussion, the DOS reports.
"AWER creates a pathway to generate sustainable, market-driven solutions to Afghan women’s economic security," the DOS states, "and underscores the United States’ deep commitment to Afghan women and girls."
Sec. Blinken welcomed and thanked the attendees for participating in the AWER launch, and acknowledged they were "meeting at a deeply challenging time for Afghan women and girls," a DOS transcript of his remarks records.
"That is no secret to anyone in this room," Blinken said. "Since taking power, the Taliban have severely restricted women’s rights in Afghanistan, turning back two decades of progress that Afghan women themselves built with the support of the international community."
Women have lost freedom of movement since the Taliban seized power in 2021, Blinken said. “They’ve banned girls from secondary school classrooms. They’ve prohibited women in the workplace, women who last year... were managing businesses, running schools, serving in government,” he said, according to the release.
He said that the repression of women's rights in Afghanistan is not only a setback to women, but to the entire country as a whole, as productivity is cut in half.
“Today, women could contribute $1 billion to Afghanistan’s economy if they were simply allowed to," Blinken said, according to the transcript. "They could provide lifelines for families facing poverty; they could help create more stable, more resilient communities at a time when those are desperately needed in Afghanistan.”
Blinken said equality and economic opportunity "go hand in hand." He said women should have equal rights "in every facet of their lives," regardless of where they live, including equal access to education, work, financial resources and freedom to travel, self-expression, "to choose their own paths."
"This should be, in the year 2022," Blinken said, "self-evident to everyone on this planet. But of course, it’s not, and we have to fight for it. We have to struggle for it every single day."
Blinken said AWER "will help improve access to education and training, expand job opportunity, support women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan as well as in other countries."
He said the alliance "reflects the resources, the innovation, the speed and expertise that we can harness when we bring together private enterprise, academic institutions, NGOs, and governments," the transcript records.
Blinken cited the alliance's partnership with American technology company Pod on the Million Women Mentors Initiative for Afghan Women and Girls. The initiative allows mentors from professional-services firm Deloitte to offer remote career guidance 2,000 Afghan women. "I have seen this work in other places," Blinken said, "and it is remarkable what you can achieve even doing things at a distance."
"Now, I don’t want to sugarcoat it," Blinken said, the transcript reports. "This is going to be hard, given the severe restraints imposed by the Taliban, but we are determined to safely deliver this support to women in Afghanistan."
