Thank you for inviting me to appear in front of this committee.
I would like to start by saying that I am a Canadian Iranian who spent my early years of education and life in Iran. After I left, I focused and devoted my studies, education and public engagement on looking at the situation and obstacles—ideological, cultural or legal obstacles—that women face and the impact of that on their lives in the MENA region.
Today I would like to draw attention to the situation in Afghanistan and in Iran very briefly.
I'm grateful that some other presenters actually covered some of the issues that I wanted to cover. I will continue by saying that, in Afghanistan, after women lost their rights and the most basic aspects of their lives, like going to school, walking in the neighbourhood, going to work, it has really unleashed misery on the nation.
An estimated three million girls, at least, are now out of school. However, as the Taliban are banning school after primary school and have now also extended that to the universities, this number has, of course, increased.
What has happened, in effect, is that the Taliban have taken the education of girls and women as hostage in order to leverage their conversation and negotiations with the west, and that's a very important aspect that often is ignored in a lot of discussions.
The problem is that, even when we reopen the schools, society will face another set of problems, as the Taliban are increasingly using the schools and educational system as a platform to spread their extreme ideology. Under this situation, the international community has to stop issuing sympathetic statements and enter into taking actions that make a difference on the ground and counteract some of the negative impact of what the Taliban are doing.
The reality is that the Taliban are a problem not only for Afghanistan, and I want to insist on this, especially observing what is in the region. If the ideology of the Taliban is not checked, it will spill over into the neighbouring countries, and finally it will also affect the west. As we saw, the training of extremists and calling them freedom fighters finally ended up in the tragedy of 9/11. Today our worlds are not so segregated that we are not affected by what is happening elsewhere.
We are calling on Canada to adopt a foreign policy that puts human rights at the centre and makes education, in particular, a centrepiece of that policy. Having a feminist foreign policy and a feminist international assistance policy that do not actually foster and protect the basic human rights of women is like expecting a bird to fly with one wing.
There are possibilities and ways that the impact of the Taliban's attack, especially on education, can be counteracted. There are people who have done research, which I am happy to share later, on some of the strategies. While other Afghan refugees have also taken steps to support them, we really need a larger-scale strategic analysis.
I also want to now go back and draw your attention to the situation in Iran, again on the education of girls there. As was mentioned, this gas attack on schoolgirls has had a large impact. A lot of civil society has actually asked us to condemn this internationally and has asked for independent research and investigation on that by entities such as UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO. This is because there is no trust in the investigation in Iran, given that the moral compass of the Iranian regime is very doubtful.
Thank you.