11 November 2021. Baroness Helena Kennedy, M100 Board member from the beginning, has rescued over 100 Afghan women judges and their families. Together with a team of lawyers, she raised more than £1 million, chartered planes and organised transport from Kabul to Athens, where they are now housed in hotels.
Baroness Kennedy persuaded the Greek president to take in the women and their families and bought half a sheep for the wedding of the daughter of a Taliban commander to get the people through a checkpoint without passports.
“This is the time of Schindler’s List,” Baroness Kennedy said. “These women were in mortal danger. They were running courts on issues like domestic violence and child marriage and many of them were locking up Taliban. As soon as the Taliban came back, they had to flee.”
Baroness Kennedy is head of the Human Rights Section of the International Bar Association, which had helped train women lawyers and judges in Afghanistan.
