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.