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Jogi women: No ID cards or right to work, and now, no homes
Ferdaws Andishmand* authored this report for the Zan Times in Persian, translated into English by Rustam Seerat.
Around a decade ago, Leqa*, a middle-aged Jogi woman, and her family moved from a tent into a simple mud home built by the previous government. Leqa says that to her once impoverished and homeless family, the shelter was more valuable than anything else: “We spent our entire lives being homeless and displaced, but, in these recent years when a shelter was built for us here, we thought we were the happiest people.” They lived near several other Jogi families in the Bagrami district of Kabul.
When the Taliban came to power, they destroyed her home in Kabul, forcing her to once again live in a tent with her husband and their eight children. Like other women of her tribe, Leqa complains about social isolation, lack of housing and shelter, financial problems, and the Taliban’s discriminatory behaviour.
The semi-nomadic Jogi community is estimated to number around 120,000 and generally lives in challenging social, economic, and health conditions. A 2011 report by Samuel Hall Consulting for UNICEF described the Jogi and other segments of the Jat population as “the most marginalized communities in Afghanistan.” At…
