In August 2021, the government promised to settle 40,000 Afghan refugees in Canada.
At OCRA, our approach has been to do what we can to identify and sponsor Afghans who have fled since the Taliban takeover and seek to sponsor them to come to Canada. This involves preparing and submitting detailed sponsorship and refugee determination applications and raising funds to support the sponsored refugees for the first year after their arrival. We support them by finding housing, transport, medical care, employment and, importantly, committed friendship to ease adjustment to life in a new country.
In 2022-24, we raised the funds to sponsor and settle 7 Afghan groups to come to Canada through the Government’s humanitarian program for Afghans subject to arrest, detention,and persecution as women leaders, journalists, religious minorities and human rights defenders.
We are currently raising funds to sponsor three young Hazara people, age 19 to 23, who fled Afghanistan and Iran and are now in Pakistan. The young woman was hunted by Taliban Prevention of Vice officers for attending an underground school for girls, walking outside with fellow students without wearing a burka, and attending a March 2024 demonstration in Kabul for International Women’s Day. She fled with her twin brother, also threatened because of his family’s support for Hazara human rights. The third young Afghan we are seeking to sponsor was forced to flee to Iran after the Taliban killed his father, an Afghan army officer.
We have raised 75% of the $54,000 required for these sponsorships. If you can help, please consider making a donation to help raise the final $14,000 required to fund these sponsorships.