Rainbow Railroad’s Response to the Crisis in Afghanistan

Since August 2021, over 1600 LGBTQI+ Afghans have requested assistance from Rainbow Railroad. Rainbow Railroad works to verify each case individually and assess the level of risk an individual faces. To date, Rainbow Railroad has fully verified over 300 people who are at high risk of experiencing immediate, life-threatening violence due to their sexual orientation or gender identity and who need to be resettled.

Rainbow Railroad has already undertaken significant engagement in Afghanistan due to the extreme and widespread nature of the threats facing LGBTQI+ people in the country. We have visited the country multiple times and have established a civil society network. To date:

• We worked directly with the U.K. government to evacuate 45 people from Afghanistan into the U.K. via Pakistan16 (the evacuation of another 30-plus people is anticipated in the coming months);

• We worked with local human rights defenders as well as global organizations to resettle 17 LGBTQI+ Afghans in Ireland in September 2021.

In collaboration with several European governments, Rainbow Railroad has facilitated the safe and legal passage of a number of at-risk LGBTQI+ people out of Afghanistan since August 2021. Of these, 62 persons have arrived in the U.K.17 and Ireland under various humanitarian admission schemes, while the rest remain in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Iran, and the UAE with uncertain prospects for resettlement in a third country.