Your local voice for Amnesty International
A panel (c.30 minutes) on Women’s Hour on 15 August with three Afghan women, one still in Kabul, discussed their lives now and the lives of women generally in Afghanistan. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb
This gripping BBC documentary told in two hour-long programmes focuses on the period from 9/11 to the final withdrawal of American troops in 2021. The story is primarily from the American point of view (though there are a few British talking heads, too) but the most powerful sections are the reactions of various Afghans to…
Continue reading Worth Watching – Afghanistan: Getting Out
A number of leading women have gone missing since the Taliban took power. This 23 minute documentary by Yalda Hakim focuses on one – Alia Azizi – who was a high-ranking prison officer. She in effect guarded those now in power and did not expect to go back to work but was told to return…
Continue reading Worth Watching – Our World: The Hunt for Alia
The new restrictions have shattered girls’ lives, in particular. Nine out of 10 girls said they were losing weight from lack of food and had no energy to study, play and work. The crisis is taking a toll on girls’ mental and psychosocial wellbeing, with more than a quarter showing signs of depression and/or anxiety…
Continue reading Breaking Point: Children Lives One Year under Taliban Rule – A Report by Save the Children
The evacuation effort in Kabul in August last year resulted in 16,000 Afghans reaching safety in the UK. However, in terms of housing, services and staff, the facilities available to help refugees in the past essentially no longer exist. Around 9,550 people have since been stuck in 70 hotels at the cost of £1mn per…
Continue reading Afghan Refugees and Resettlement
Since the Taliban took power, life has deteriorated fast. Most international aid was suspended in August 2021 and government reserves were frozen. This has led to a near collapse of the economy and a humanitarian crisis, with almost 20 million people at risk of life-threatening hunger. Human rights have gone into reverse. Restrictions have been…
Continue reading Life in Afghanistan
According to the Panorama programme SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime? British Special Forces soldiers allegedly killed detainees and unarmed men in suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan. It alleged 54 such killings by one British SAS unit on a six-month tour in 2010-11. It also claimed that senior officers took no action. The former…
Continue reading Worth Watching
The role of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) is to protect vulnerable and exploited workers. In a recent case investigated by the GLAA, they found Indian students who had stopped attending classes at Greenwich, Chester and Teesside universities shortly after arriving in the UK were working in exploitative conditions in the care sector…
Continue reading Universities and Modern Slavery
The government estimates that at any one time there are 10,000 to 13,000 people in situations of slavery in the UK, but experts believe it is closer to 100,000. Government estimate the annual cost to be £4.3bn but, again, experts say it is nearer £32.9bn. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 provides measures for dealing with…
Continue reading Modern Slavery in the UK
An investigation for openDemocracy has found that gypsy, Roma and traveller communities are being forced to live on contaminated land, by motorways and near sewage works or risk arrest. Two-thirds of the 60 short-term ‘transit’ sites in England – and just over half of the country’s 242 permanent sites – are within 100m of one…
Continue reading Criminalisation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities