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Afghan educator of refugee girls wins prestigious UN award

Kot Chandana - Before she arrived in the Kot Chandana refugee village in Mianwali in northern Pakistan, strict cultural traditions had kept most girls at home, but Asifi slowly managed to convince the community to allow her to teach them.

Aqeela Asifi, who has dedicated her life to bringing education to Afghan refugee girls in Pakistan, was on Tuesday awarded the UN refugee agency's annual Nansen prize.
Asifi, a 49-year-old teacher who fled from Afghanistan with her family in 1992, was given the prestigious award for "her brave and tireless dedication to education for Afghan refugee girls," UNHCR said in a statement.
Before she arrived in the Kot Chandana refugee village in Mianwali in northern Pakistan, strict cultural traditions had kept most girls at home, but Asifi slowly managed to convince the community to allow her to teach them.
She initially began teaching a handful of girls in a tent, copying out worksheets by hand.
"Despite minimal resources and significant cultural challenges, Asifi has guided a thousand refugee girls through their primary education," the agency said, pointing out that her efforts came while she was herself facing the challenges of life in exile.
"When you have mothers who are educated, you will almost certainly have future generations who are educated," Asifi said in the statement.
"So if you educate girls, you educate generations," she said, adding: "I wish for the day when people will remember Afghanistan not for war but for its standard of education."
The award honours extraordinary service to the forcibly displaced, and names Eleanor Roosevelt, Graça Machel and Luciano Pavarotti among its laureates.
"I would not have been able to do it without the help of my family and the permission of the community elders," Asifi told Khaleej Times. Asifi who hails from Kabul said that her husband belonged to the Kuchi nomadic tribe who were staunchly against the education of girls. Her husband runs a small grocery store in the camp.
"In Kabul there were very few families who didn't send their girls to schools before the war . but that was not the case in the rest of Afghanistan," she added. In the beginning, she said that the community did not know what to call her. There was no word for teacher in Pushto or Dari.
"The classes increased in popularity. eventually I was given four tents and that slowly became concrete buildings'" she added. "Access to quality and safe education helps children grow into adults who go on to secure jobs, start businesses and help build their communities, and it makes them less vulnerable to exploitation and abuse," UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres said in the statement.
"People like Aqeela Asifi understand that today's refugee children will determine the future of their countries, and the future of the world," he said.
The Nansen award was created in 1954 in honour of the first UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, to mark outstanding work on behalf of refugees.
Asifi will receive her commemorative medal and $100,000 (88,500 euros) in prize money - to use to fund a project that compliments her existing work - at a ceremony in Geneva on October 5.
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com