Afghanistan’s all-girls robotics team reportedly desperate to escape country

Afghanistan's all-girls robotics team, which has become widely known for its inventions in recent years, is desperately trying to escape the country in the wake of the Taliban seizing control.

“They’re worried about what tomorrow brings. They want to continue to be educated. They want to continue to be the future of Afghanistan. But it’s an extremely tenuous and dangerous situation for them,” human rights lawyer Kimberley Motley told CBC on Sunday.

Motley explained that the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau was an "amazing supporter" of the girls and met with them in 2018. Motley wants Canada to take the girls out of Afghanistan safely and possibly declare them refugees - something that the country has promised another 20,000 Afghans.

Afghanistan's all-girls robotics team, which includes 20 girls aged 12 to 18, was a shining example of improving women's rights in the country after the US invasion. However, the US withdrawal called Afghanistan's future into question as the Taliban took control of Kabul on Sunday.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reportedly fled the country and was given no battle against the Taliban, a group known for mistreating women and girls who are treated as sex slaves.

“Unfortunately, what’s been happening to little girls over this last week is that the Taliban has been literally going from door to door and literally taking girls out and forcing them to become child brides. And we are very, very concerned of that happening with this Afghan girls robotics team—these girls that want to be engineers, they want to be in the AI community and they dare to dream to succeed,” Motley said.

“And we are literally begging the Canadian government. We’re begging Prime Minister Trudeau, who has been an amazing supporter of the Afghan girls robotics team, to please allow them to come to Canada.”

“Well, Canada has just been extremely kind to the Afghan girls robotics team. And it’s really with the government supporting them, frankly, when they met Prime Minister Trudeau, that was a huge life-changing experience for them. They came to Canada, they competed in Canada, and actually, they won the competition and they won the Rookie Star Award when they came there, which was the highest honor that they could win in their category for a robotics competition,” Motley said.

“And so they want to be educated. They want to be in a safe place. They want to make Afghanistan proud, and they want to make the world proud and to continue on with their robotics dreams, their A.I. dreams,” Motley continued. “And they believe that Canada would be an amazing place to continue to basically have a future.”