Fátima Amiri, the Afghan woman who cannot study because of the Taliban in Afghanistan and bureaucracy in Spain.

BarcelonaShe remembers ending up with all her clothes and hair covered in blood, and having to jump over the lifeless bodies of her friends lying on the floor after a suicide bomber blew himself up in their classroom. It was September 30, 2022. She was only seventeen years old then. In the attack, she lost her left eye and ear, and more than fifty of her classmates were killed. However, Fatima Amiri didn't become famous for that, but because a week after the attack on her school in Kabul, she took the entrance exam, badly injured, and achieved one of the highest marks. "I couldn't miss that opportunity," she says. The international media talked about her feat, and even the BBC included her in The list of the 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2022.

However, Fatima never made it to university in Kabul. Shortly after, in early 2023, the Taliban expelled all women from universities, so her efforts were in vain. Several well-known individuals and individuals, moved by her case, raised money so she could receive treatment in Turkey to recover her hearing—which she never recovered—to have her jaw repaired, which was also permanently damaged, and to have a glass eye inserted into the empty socket.

Fatima traveled to Ankara accompanied by her elderly father, who had a heart condition, because otherwise the Taliban would not let her leave the country. In Turkey, she took the university entrance exams again, passed again, and began studying computer engineering, but after a month she had to drop out of university because the Turkish authorities threatened to deport her father. At the end of 2023, father and daughter arrived in Spain, which was one of the few countries that offered them international protection. They currently live in Salamanca. "I want to study computer engineering, but they also put obstacles in my way here. There are no Taliban, but I can't study either," laments the young woman, who just turned twenty. If the Taliban prevented her from doing so in Afghanistan, the problem here is bureaucracy.

Fátima's official high school diploma states that she completed her studies in 2021, the year the Taliban returned to power and expelled all female secondary school students from high schools. But in reality, she managed to graduate a year later, in September 2022, shortly before she was seriously injured and had to take the university entrance exam in Kabul. The fact that her official diploma indicates that she finished in 2021 (and not 2022) forces her to also have to take the university entrance exam in Spain. For the third time. "I'm human, not a robot," she laments.

The only country where women can't study

Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women are prohibited from pursuing secondary and higher education. They are also unable to work in skilled trades or travel alone. Their situation is dire, as all international organizations agree. But what is being done here to help them?

In 2022, the Spanish Ministry of Universities awarded €2.6 million in subsidies to public universities to meet the needs of students and faculty from Ukraine. However, it has never proposed anything similar for Afghan students. Nor is anything planned in the Ministry of Equality, the Ministry of Migration, the Departments of Research and Universities, or the Department of Equality and Feminisms, in the case of Catalonia, as ARA has verified.

"We do not have data on the specific programs that each university can develop in the area of international cooperation and solidarity," the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) has shielded itself, which at the time, when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, spoke in favor of offering "protection and assistance to academics and students in Afghanistan."

Since then, the University of Valencia is the only university in Spain to offer a scholarship program specifically for Afghan women. It did so for the first time in the 2022-2023 academic year and received a total of 67 applications, 49 of which were from women who remained in Afghanistan and aspired to continue their studies. However, the university only awarded four scholarships because it lacked the necessary resources. In the 2023-2024 academic year, it held a second call and again awarded scholarships to the same four recipients, according to Pilar Serra, Vice-Rector for Sustainability, Cooperation, and Healthy Living.

Other universities have also awarded scholarships to Afghan students, but these have always been very rare cases. Perhaps the most numerous is the Carlos III University of Madrid, which this year awarded scholarships to eighteen refugee women, six of whom were Afghan. All of them were master's students. That is to say, in no case are these girls who were on the threshold of university in Afghanistan or who had already started their studies and couldn't continue because of the Taliban's ban.

"We have problems facilitating their access, because logically these refugees don't flee their country with a folder of certified documents under their arm," declares Ana López, vice-rector of Social Services, Healthy Campus, Equality and Cooperation at the University of Seville, the only one who has so far taken an interest in Fátima Amiri's case and who is moving heaven and earth so that she can study, but who is also running into terrible bureaucracy.

Alternatives in Afghanistan

If studies aren't made easier for them here, at least something is being done to enable women to study in Afghanistan? The Catalan NGO Bridges for Peace It has clandestine schools where many of these young women, who have been expelled from the education system by the Taliban, study. However, their problem is being able to send money to Afghanistan because bank transfers are currently not possible due to the financial blockade imposed by the international community against this regime. The only way to transfer money is through Western Union, MoneyGram, or the system known as hawala"Some donors are flexible, such as the Catalan Fund for Development Cooperation, the Mallorcan Fund for Development Cooperation, or the Menorcan Fund, and accept these transfer methods," says the association's founder and president, Nadia Ghulam. Others, however, don't want to hear about it.

The Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation has allocated €1.6 million in aid to Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power, but all the money has been for humanitarian assistance and channeled through the UN World Food Programme. This year, for the first time, it will fund a Ponts per la Pau project aimed at training girls and women.

For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also made a significant financial effort in Afghanistan since 2021, with a total contribution of €43.3 million, which it has also sent through United Nations agencies that work with the Taliban's approval and, logically, cannot invest in training women if they want to continue operating in the country. Likewise, Spain has organized two meetings for Afghan activists to make their voices heard.

"We need action"

"Beyond words, we need action," says Fátima Amiri, who laments that there is so much talk about women in Afghanistan, but nothing is done to enable them to study, such as by granting scholarships or offering free online courses for girls expelled from the education system. María López de la Usada, vice president of Netwomening, a network of volunteers helping Afghan refugees in Spain: "We have to roll up our sleeves, and in this regard, civil society is way ahead of the administrations."

Fátima never tires of knocking on doors to study computer engineering: she's been to the Catalan Parliament, met with politicians, with the director of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, with NGOs... Everyone agrees that her story is heartbreaking and her resilience admirable. But, for now, no one has lifted a finger to ensure that she can finally study at university.