Support for Enabling Afghan Women's Access to Legal Education
The project on Enabling Afghan Women’s Access to Legal Education comes at a critical time. The takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban regime in 2021 brought an abrupt end to the ability of women and girls to access secondary and tertiary education, including legal education. The situation continues to deteriorate even further, weakening legal education as a whole, affecting the entire Afghan legal community and legal system. The denial of access to education directly affects young women still in Afghanistan aspiring to undertake or complete studies in law. It also affects those who have left Afghanistan and are now based in other countries, struggling with new languages and legal systems and deeply insecure about what the future may hold for them, inside or outside Afghanistan. This project offers a means to keep going, to keep hope alive, and to develop and further legal skills in ways that are productive and can lead in new directions.
MIED is a platform with proven success in providing high quality education to Afghan girls and women, linking a community of committed Afghan legal professionals with students enduring the Taliban regime. However, the demand and need for legal education far outstrips MIED’s current capacity. This project will extend and augment MIED’s offerings to meet this unmet need and enhance students’ employability by designing and delivering an innovative one-year legal education program. This new joint program will include a focus on global and comparative law subjects, drawing on the expertise and experience of both Melbourne Law School and MIED to provide world class, transferable legal skills to a cohort of Afghan women who will go on to contribute to law reform in Afghanistan and globally. MIED’s founding Director, Professor Ghulam Shah Adel Alizai, former Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences in Herat, is uniquely placed to oversee the design and implementation of the program and to ensure it meets its aims. The program will engage the knowledge, expertise and commitment of lawyers and legal scholars who have fled from Afghanistan to find a home in Australia and who are anxious to make a positive contribution here, and to support the people of Afghanistan. Melbourne Law School is proud to support the Afghan legal community and to partner with MIED in this exciting and transformative project.
Click here for more information on MIED and its current activities
Queries can be directed to Professor Cheryl Saunders.