Finland has awarded the International Gender Equality prize for 2023 to an NGO in Afghanistan that provides shelters for women, and works to promote and protect women's rights in the Taliban-controlled country.
The award means the Kabul-based 'Afghan Women Skills Development Center' (AWSDC) will receive 300,000 euros in funding from the Finnish government.
When the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan just over two years ago, there were 27 organisations operating women's shelters across the country. Now there is only one — AWSDC, which runs eight family centres in eight provinces across Afghanistan.
Presenting the award at a ceremony in Tampere on Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) noted that women and girls face gender persecution in Afghanistan.
"Finland has strongly supported gender equality and women's rights in Afghanistan for 20 years, and for a long time the country was the biggest recipient of Finnish development aid. Finland continues to provide this important support to the extent possible," Orpo said.
The centre is run by Afghan journalist and women's right activist Mahbouba Seraj, who collected the award on behalf of the NGO, noting that she has seen "domestic violence at its darkest".
Seraj said some women and girls arrive at the centres having had their ears or noses cut off, or their limbs broken.
She added that most of the women who end up in the shelter have fled an abusive husband or in-laws, or they are young girls running away from their parents to avoid being forced into marriage.
"With the money made possible by this, I am going to go back home and I am going to spend it on a project that is going to take all of those women involved and I am going to make sure that they all know this award was given to me by one of the most amazing countries in the world that has gender equality as the first order of its government," Seraj said in her acceptance speech, which can be viewed in the video below.
The International Gender Equality prize has been awarded every two years since 2017, with previous recipients including the We Will Stop Femicide platform in 2021, which works to combat violence against women in Turkey, and Equality Now in 2019, an NGO that seeks to challenge discriminatory laws and practices in different countries.
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