For the past 18 months, a generation of Afghan women who had been studying at universities to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers have been stuck at home.
It was a sign of things going from bad to worse, with secondary schools having already been closed to girls after the Taliban takeover in 2021.
In spite of this, the Linda Norgrove Foundation continues to fight for women’s education in Afghanistan, doing what we can to help Afghan girls and young women to access the few opportunities that remain.
State-run primary education is very basic, so for the past three years we have paid the fees for 50 girls from poor families in Kabul to attend Gawharshad Private School, covering their tuition, stationery, schoolbooks and uniform.
Midwifery is currently the only subject women are still allowed to study at local colleges. With almost three quarters of Afghans living in rural areas, we try to ensure our support is decentralised, reaching beyond the big cities.
We have initially funded 20 residential places for women to study the profession at the Sheefa Midwifery Institute in the northern province of Badakhshan, where a trusted resident German volunteer oversees the programme for us.
Funding study places for midwives will undoubtedly have a huge and long-lasting impact, reducing both maternal death rates and infant mortality – the average Afghan woman gives birth to five children and mothers are 50 times more likely to die giving birth than in the UK. We plan to expand this successful programme in the autumn by supporting a further 20 students.
And after three years of campaigning, our ambition to bring 20 Afghan medical students to Scotland to complete their studies looks to be on track. Watch this space…