PESHAWAR: A Pakistani workshop in the bustling northwestern city of Peshawar, is helping Afghan women refugees become financially independent.
Mahra Basheer, a 37-year-old inhabitant of Peshawar, founded the skills center last year in response to the steady influx of refugees from neighboring Afghanistan, where the Taliban took power in 2021 and there are increasing restrictions on women’s rights and the economy.
She opened the workshop to teach tailoring as well as digital skills and cosmetic procedures in an effort to give women options for being financially independent. A large wait list and hundreds of women enrolling were discovered shortly by Basheer.
“If we get assistance, I think we will be able to train between 250 and 500 students at one time, empowering women who can play an important role in the community,” Basheer said.
Officials say hundreds of thousands of Afghans have travelled to Pakistan since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021. Even before then, Pakistan hosted some 1.5 million registered refugees, one of the largest such populations in the world, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
More than a million others are estimated to live there unregistered. Grappling with an economic crisis of its own, Pakistan’s government is increasingly anxious about the number of Afghans arriving, officials say. Lawyers and officials have said scores of Afghans have been arrested in recent months on allegations they don’t have the correct legal documents to live in Pakistan.
Basheer said that her main focus was expanding operations for Afghan women and she has also included some Pakistani women in the program to boost their opportunities in the conservative area. Once graduating from the three-month course, the women are focused on earning a modest but meaningful income, often starting their own businesses.
