The Partial Observer by Jennifer Hill

At-risk Activist Afghan Women Find Refuge in Brazil

I did not have going to Brazil to assist Afghan refugees there on my Bingo card this year. On August 14, however, I did just that. I flew all night to Sao Paolo from JFK and met Rebecca Trotter, the co-founder of Food for Thought Afghanistan, at the airport at 6 a.m. the next morning. I had been on FFTA’s board since its founding in spring 2024 and only talked with Rebecca online. I met her in person in Brazil for the first time.

Earlier, at 3 a.m., Rebecca had greeted the second group of Afghan families FFTA had worked for months to get out of Pakistan and to Brazil, about 32 people. The families ranged in size from just three—a mother and her two teenage kids—to nine, with seven young adult siblings and their elderly parents. FFTA’s first group of eight Afghans reached Brazil in late July and now live in different cities across Brazil.

The Afghan families FFTA has focused on helping share a trait: Each has at least one woman activist who protested publicly against the Taliban in Afghanistan after they banned education for girls after the sixth grade and banned women from employment. One woman in the second group who made it to Brazil, Manizha Sediqi, was imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban for seven months. Others were sexually assaulted. Some of the women and girls were forced, or were going to be forced, to marry Taliban members. All the women and their family members were threatened with arrest, imprisonment and death. All fled to Islamabad, Pakistan to escape further persecution.

In Pakistan, though, their lives were precarious. Most did not have legal documents because the Taliban seized them, so they could not access basic services and resources in Pakistan or leave the country. The Pakistani Taliban, abetted by Pakistani police, searched for the women activists, to arrest and deport them back to Afghanistan where they would be harmed and probably executed.

The women activists in the group come from diverse backgrounds and interests. There are para-Olympians, professional soccer players, artists, lawyers, those who identify as gay, and who dream of being a doctor, economist or business leader.

Meanwhile, the international community had lost interest in helping Afghan refugees, even women activists who qualified for asylum in different countries. Even Amnesty International’s campaign for Manizha Saddiq’s release from Taliban custody drew little international attention.

Ahmad Reshad Attai, FFTA’s 35-year-old creator and co-founder, learned of the 60 women activists and their plight in the summer of 2024. Reshad and his family had fled Afghanistan after the Taliban retook control in 2021 and were able to get asylum in Switzerland. Later, Reshad became a student at the prestigious Geneva Graduate Institute and will graduate in September with a master’s in peace and conflict studies. As part of his master’s thesis, Reshad interviewed the 60 women and heard about their dangerous predicament. When he learned that no one was helping the activists and their families, he and Rebecca sprang into action.

By January 2025, Reshad and Rebecca had connected with several international organizations, which donated funds to help the Afghans. However, the Afghans’ situation in Pakistan became more dire because the Pakistani government began threatening to deport them back to Afghanistan. By then, though, FFTA learned that Brazil had opened its doors to Afghan refugees and would accept their applications more quickly than other countries. For Brazil to accept the Afghans as refugees, FFTA would have to provide funding for their documentation, travel to Brazil, and living expenses for each person for one year.

By happenstance, FFTA connected with Avaaz, a U.S.-based international nonprofit which has about 70 million members worldwide. When Avaaz hears of an international crisis, it will survey its members on whether or not to support solutions to the crisis with funds, media attention and other resources. Their members then vote on it.

When Avaaz presented FFTA’s plan to get the Afghan activists and families to Brazil to its membership, they voted overwhelmingly to fund it. Since then, Avaaz has provided grant funding of $500,000.00, the most it has ever raised for a specific issue. FFTA and the Brazilian organization settling the Afghan refugees, Panahgah, have wrestled with and negotiated Pakistan’s ever-changing rules, requirements, obstacles, and fees—which can sometimes prevent Afghans from leaving even after they have boarded their flights to Brazil.

With a full-time job, I have not had much time to work on the project. In July, Reshad told me Brazilian media would be interviewing the second group of Afghans after they arrived in August and FFTA would hold a press conference on it. He asked me to go to Brazil and join Rebecca in representing FFTA to the media. I jumped at the chance.

I met the Afghans my second day in Brazil, when Rebecca and I went to the hotel resort where they were staying temporarily, about two hours from Sao Paolo. Panahgah has the newly-arrived families stay at the resort for one to two weeks, so they can be in a calm, beautiful environment after years of living in fear in Pakistan and have time to adjust to their new country. Then, Panahgah will help move the families to cities best suited to the family’s needs, such as K-12 education for younger children.

I will never forget first meeting the Afghan families. The Afghans embraced Rebecca, thanking her for saving their lives, some of them in tears. When they found out I was part of FFTA, they embraced and thanked me, too.

“Rebecca and Reshad are angels,” said Jahanzeb, a 32-year-old son and brother of women activists. “They saved our lives. The Taliban was going to kill me if I didn’t get out of Pakistan.”

Asnaut, 22, who loved practicing her English with me, said she had just begun medical school in Kabul when she was forced to leave it after the Taliban banned higher education for women. She was thrilled she would be able to return to her studies in Brazil.

Unfortunately, the press conference kept being delayed and did not happen until after I left Brazil on August 21.

We still have a lot left to do. We have to get the rest of the Afghans out of Pakistan and to Brazil and other safe countries. I am heading an initiative to find safe housing in Pakistan for about 15 Afghans who are in particularly bad situations, including a mother and her two children living in a park so the Taliban won’t find them. And we have to start implementing FFTA’s original mission, which is to empower Afghans inside the country to build educational, economic, and civic institutions to make it a stable, thriving nation.

To find out more about and support FFTA’s mission, please visit foodforthought.care.

Oneonta resident Jennifer Hill is a longtime community educator and activist. She has a master’s degree in public administration. In addition to her work with Food for Thought Afghanistan, Hill advocates for the wrongly convicted in her spare time.