Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.
I appear before you as an Afghan Canadian lawyer who himself once was welcomed to Canada as a refugee, back in the 1980s. That was when Afghanistan was actually invaded by the then Soviet Red Army, much like the tragedy we witness in Ukraine today.
As a refugee lawyer, in the past 20 years I have had the honour of listening to some of the most horrific and heart-wrenching accounts narrated by Afghan refugees fleeing their homeland. Over the years, my colleagues and I have come to learn of the Taliban's propensity to some of the most horrendous violence imaginable, and how those targeted by the group end up being tortured and killed on the basis of no more than a mere suspicion.
Therefore, when Taliban forces took power in Kabul and entered the city on August 15 of last year, we had no doubt as to the terrifying future and atrocities that awaited those who stood for democracy, freedom, gender equality and human rights.
In the weeks that followed, my colleagues and I worked around the clock fielding hundreds of calls and emails from Afghans seeking resettlement in Canada in order to save their lives. We wrote letters to the government and, in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover, we attended several high-level meetings with ministers of the government and officials. There, we put forth recommendations and discussed Canada's response. We also found ourselves on the receiving end of a flurry of inquiries from the community as to the specifics of Canada's response and how the government intended to help.
However, once Canada announced its pledge to resettle 20,000 vulnerable Afghans, which was later increased to 40,000, the impediments appeared insurmountable to those of us in the legal community. For one thing, requirements for Afghans to be in a third country clearly shut the door to those targeted individuals who were still inside the country and moving from safe house to safe house to save their lives and evade the Taliban.
Furthermore, the eligibility criteria for the special humanitarian program turned out to be extremely narrow, excluding many at-risk groups, including women fearing gender-based persecution. Under the program, once prospective refugees somehow do make it to a third country, they are required to obtain UNHCR acceptance, UNHCR referral and, basically, refugee recognition by the UNHCR host country. The problem is that in none of the countries bordering Afghanistan is the UNHCR actually doing that. It's not available.
Also, none of the neighbouring countries have their own system of refugee determination. Tajikistan was the only one that was doing it before, but post-August 2021 they stopped, because I guess they were overwhelmed by the flood of refugees that ended up in that country.
While Canada's special resettlement program is set up with good intentions, in my respectful, humble opinion it is unable, in its current form, to respond to the crisis in Afghanistan in an effective and timely manner. What's more, the UNHCR prerequisite also makes it impossible for Canadians to resettle Afghan refugees through the programs that are designed for private sponsorship programs, such as the group of five private sponsorships.
There are currently literally hundreds of groups in Canada that are ready, able and willing to sponsor Afghan refugees from third countries, but they cannot do that, because of this particular requirement for the UNHCR recognition. This prerequisite is prohibitive and must be waived, as was done in the case of Syria back in 2015.
Having said this, however, when we look at the government and how the government is utilizing simple and expeditious measures to facilitate the resettlement of Ukrainians to Canada, one starts to wonder: Why isn't this possible for Afghan refugees? Since August 2021, only 8,500 Afghans have been resettled in Canada out of the 40,000 pledged. For Ukrainians, we have resettled over 7,000 in the first three months alone, since January.
By comparison, Canada resettled 25,000 Syrian refugees in a matter of about 100 days, meaning that when there's a will, there always is a way.