10/11/22
Following the one-year anniversary of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on Aug. 15, the ABA Journal is highlighting the ABA’s efforts to help judges, lawyers and others from Afghanistan resettle, obtain immigration benefits and secure jobs using their legal skills. This is part three in our series.
For about eight years, Qari Abeera Ziayi lived in Herat, Afghanistan, and worked on hundreds of cases involving violence against women and children, criminal and civil issues and divorces.
Along with being a lawyer, she advocated for human rights and taught as a university professor. She also volunteered to help children with disabilities in school and underprivileged women with hand embroidery art.
“Since my childhood, I wanted to serve the society and people honestly, and I found lawyering to be a field that could connect me to my dreams,” Ziayi says. “So I chose the field of law and for a long time, I served people a lot through law.”
Because of her work, Ziayi became a target of the Taliban even before the fall of Kabul in August 2021. Members of the group threatened her and attacked her and her family several times. They threw grenades and bombs at their home. They broke windows in both their home and their car. They also beat her elderly father.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Ziayi felt she had no choice but to flee.
“I was hiding in dark rooms, away from sunlight, in Kabul city for three months, and the terrorists searched a lot to find me and kill me,” she says. “They called me several times and were trying to trace me, but I changed my place of residence several times. The Taliban were looking for me everywhere.”
Ziayi left her country in October 2021, and through a foreign organization that assisted female lawyers facing danger in Afghanistan, she was brought to Emirates Humanitarian City. Managed by the United Arab Emirates government, the temporary camp housed thousands of Afghan evacuees.
That’s where Ziayi eventually met Jordan Jones, a volunteer attorney who is working with the ABA’s Afghanistan Response Project to help Afghan judges, prosecutors and other rule of law professionals move from the Emirates Humanitarian City and into welcoming jurisdictions. Jones is the director of legal affairs at the Humanitarian Legal Assistance Project in Washington, D.C.
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https://www.hrw.org/fr/news/2022/10/20/afghanistan-des-manifestantes-decrivent-les-abus-des-talibans
https://lactualite.com/actualites/justin-trudeau-na-pas-de-calendrier-pour-debloquer-laide-afghane/
IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers 