Former Afghan refugee and DAFI scholar, Suhaila, stands in the library of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, in the Kyrgyz Republic, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration.© UNHCR/Elyor Nemat
In the Kyrgyz Republic, a young Afghan woman has found hope and a determination to give back to her home country through education
By Radhika Bhatnagar in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic
Since she was a child, Suhaila has always found comfort in numbers. “I don’t like vague things,” said the 24-year-old Afghan former refugee who now works in financial administration. “Numbers are always certain, stable.”
For someone who was forced to flee her home at the age of four, this desire for stability is understandable. In the year 2000, amid rising insecurity and violence in Afghanistan, Suhaila’s parents decided that it was no longer a safe place to raise their children, and the family fled to the Kyrgyz Republic.
“At first, it was difficult,” Suhaila recalled, adding that it was only after the family enrolled in classes offered by the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, including Russian language classes, that they started to integrate and make friends with other members of the Afghan community in Bishkek, the capital.
As recognized refugees, Suhaila and her family were issued refugee cards and had access to some basic rights, including education. She and her siblings soon settled in at their new school, but Suhaila remembers that it was much more challenging for her mother, who was a homemaker, to adapt to their new life in Bishkek.
“It was at that point I decided that I wanted to be independent,” she said, adding that getting an education was the most important step towards realizing that goal.
“When I got the scholarship, I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.”
Suhaila
Suhaila reads a book in the library of the American University of Central Asia.© UNHCR/Elyor Nemat
After graduating from high school, Suhaila wanted to study further. Her parents were supportive, but she knew it was a huge financial undertaking. When she heard about the DAFI scholarship programme, run by UNHCR with support from the German Government and other donors, she decided to apply. A year later, she received a scholarship to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business administration, specializing in financial accounting, at the American University of Central Asia.
“When I got the scholarship, I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders,” she said.
Young refugees face huge barriers when it comes to higher education. Besides the high cost of tuition fees, many lack power or connectivity at home. The barriers for young female refugees are even higher, with more refugee boys graduating from secondary school than refugee girls. While progress has been made in increasing the number of refugees enrolled in higher education from 1 per cent in 2019 to 7 per cent in 2023, partly as a result of the DAFI programme, enrolment rates still lag far behind those of non-refugees.
Since the DAFI programme launched in the Kyrgyz Republic in 1997, over 100 young refugees have been able to pursue higher education.
© UNHCR
For Suhaila, attending university was life-changing in more ways than one. She found herself surrounded by bright, ambitious young women, many of them from Afghanistan.
“I didn’t grow up in conflict, but they did. Despite that, they had so much energy and passion to change their lives,” she said.
What she learned from her new friends together with the freedom of studying at a liberal arts university inspired her to take a deeper interest in what was happening in Afghanistan and efforts to end the conflict there.
“Since I come from Afghanistan, where there is always conflict, always war, I was curious about peacebuilding organizations, about how they work on such issues,” she said. “This work is really valuable, and sometimes dangerous, but it’s worth it.”
Today, Suhaila works in the administrative and finance office of Search for Common Ground, an international non-governmental organization focused on social cohesion, conflict resolution and conflict prevention. And although she has been away for more than 20 years, Afghanistan and its women are never far from her thoughts.
“In the future, if it will be possible security-wise to go back and work in Afghanistan, I really do want to help women there … I was heartbroken when I heard that the Taliban had banned women from higher education,” she said.
Since 2021, women and girls in Afghanistan have been facing systematic discrimination in all areas of public life and are unable to exercise their basic human rights. UNHCR, together with the rest of the UN system, continues to urge the country’s de facto authorities to end restrictions for women and girls.
Suhaila moved one step closer to realizing her dream of travelling and working in 2023 when she gained citizenship in the Kyrgyz Republic, with help from UNHCR’s legal support and counselling services.
“Even though I had a refugee card, and it is legal for me to work in the Kyrygz Republic, it was difficult to find work,” explained Suhaila, adding that some organizations are wary of the processes involved in hiring refugees.
“It was surreal,” she said, recalling the moment she received her citizenship. “Now that I have citizenship, I am in control.”
