Donate to our Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund

We are a coalition of NGOs, academics, activists, women’s rights defenders, journalists, artists, filmmakers and peacebuilders. We are working to get our Afghan colleagues and families, who are under direct threat from the Taliban, to safety. They have worked to bring peace to Afghanistan over the last 20 years, have fought for the rights of all Afghans, and especially women, girls and minority groups in direct opposition to the Taliban. They now come to us for help because nobody came for them.

Our colleagues are growing increasingly desperate and anxious about their safety due to their highly visible work on sensitive projects. Some are targeted due to the nature of their work, including the promotion of women’s rights and gender equality, some due to their work being funded by Western governments and many simply because of their gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity.

We are also working to support Afghans that have been able to flee or have arrived in host or transit countries. They are in unfamiliar places, may not speak the local language, and have few if any resources. Many of them have young families and are struggling to process the events over the past weeks and the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Your donation will help us facilitate:

• Secure transport to a location of safety. This will be in the form of security, travel costs, covid tests, access to safe houses and emergency medical support.

• Emergency funds to support personal security measures as well as prepare and mitigate against humanitarian disaster as food prices in Afghanistan have sky-rocketed and goods are increasingly scarce.

• Practical and financial support for people in transit or living under precarious conditions and whose livelihoods have been impacted. This includes food, medical care, clothes, communication devices, interpretation services and counselling at this difficult time.

• Legal and administrative support to access, understand and submit the necessary paperwork to secure their stays both in a final host country and temporary transit countries. These processes are often slow and arduous.

Please donate and share in solidarity with Afghanistan, your support provides options when it feels like there are none and inspires hope to be able to get through this devastation. 100% of funds raised will go towards these efforts. We urge you to recognise your power and ability to help those who the world seems to want to leave behind.

You can help. You can do something. Please donate!

More about our coalition

Most of us are working through small NGOs, academic centres, universities or in an individual capacity, and have been called to this work because of our direct connections with Afghan friends and colleagues and the dreams they had for their country. We may not be one formal institution, but we are a collective of small committed networks. Powerful countries and leaders have left the responsibility to protect ordinary citizens and civilians to us, and together we have been able to use the strength of our network and connections to get people to safety and the support they need. But there are still many of our colleagues who need help and are at high levels of risk, and we won’t stop until they are safe.

We are a transnational, collaborative and equitable coalition, and make sure to centre Afghans in our work – no matter their age, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. We listen to what they need, and mobilise to share information, strategize on complex details of physical and mental safety, and tap our vast social capital to demand accountability from the relevant powerholders.

To follow us on social media @sanambna, @ProfessorBlitz, @Neelamraina, @whatthewomensay @GCRFGenderHub, @LSE_WPS, @armanshahr_oa, @Deeyah_Khan.

If you would like to find out more about the work we are doing to urgently help Afghans, and to find out about other ways you can help, please contact the Gender, Justice and Security Hub Communications Manager Nicky Armstrong: n.armstrong@lse.ac.uk or the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) Program Director Melinda Holmes: Melinda.Holmes@icanpeacework.org

All donations received are being managed and distributed by the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN). If you have any questions on the financial management of the Afghanistan Emergency Relief Fund please contact: info@icanpeacework.org.