A pathway to Canada was established in 2019 for refugees in offshore detention by the Refugee Council of Australia and the Canadian resettlement NGO, MOSAIC. The Victorian Quaker Fund, the Yearly Meeting Thanksgiving Fund and QSA have provided essential support for the refugees as they await resettlement in Canada. This has been a lifeline as the conditions in PNG have continued to deteriorate.

Covid and other factors have led to enormous delays in processing their applications for resettlement in Canada and the waiting period has increased from two years to now four years.  The Afghan men were losing hope that they would ever get to Canada and the prospect of being reunited with their families was fading fast.

Robyn Fetter, a volunteer with Operation not Forgotten, and Jan Trewhella from Our Afghan Families, joined forces and have worked tirelessly to raise funds so that ten Afghan families can obtain essential food, fuel for cooking and heating, and 

medical care. In doing so, Jan and Robyn have developed close relationships with these Afghan families and provided emotional as well as practical support.

Knowing that their families were being supported helped bring the Afghans subject to offshore detention back from the brink of despair and suicide. Some of their families are in hiding in Kabul. Others are in remote villages, hoping to escape the attention of the Taliban. One family had to flee to a neighbouring country to protect an adolescent girl from sexual advances by the Taliban.

Slowly, things have begun to move. To date:

• 69 refugees from a range of nationalities have arrived in Canada, of whom 38 have completed the one-year settlement program and 31 are in their first year
• 47 refugees are still waiting to go to Canada
• 102 family members are waiting to go to Canada, of whom 38 are relatives of men who have arrived and 64 are relatives of men still waiting to go to Canada.

Finding the money to send to the ten families in Afghanistan every six weeks has become a real struggle. Individual donors had been keeping Our Afghan Families going but as time has passed it has proved harder and harder to sustain the level of donations required. In June 2023 the Jan de Voogd Peace Fund made a grant of $25,000 which covered the needs of four of the ten families from June 2023 to June 2024. To support all ten families, it is necessary to raise a total of $8,000 every six weeks.

Most of the family groups are large, with several adolescent and young adult sons and daughters. The girls and young women in these families are at high risk of sexual predation. The Taliban have prevented women from earning a living and banned girls from undertaking secondary and tertiary education.