#melissa network

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The Afghan women making Athens their new home

I've never been to Afghanistan, nor do I speak Dari or Pashto, the country's two official languages. So when I actually find myself on a rainy January morning in Athens at a centre for women Afghan refugees and migrants, the question I ask myself, even if just for a moment, is: what am I doing here?

I had pitched the story a few weeks before. I had read an article about how the Greek capital had unexpectedly become a hub for Afghan women and their families forced to flee Afghanistan following the Taliban's sudden return to power in August 2021.

Most of the women were reported to be judges, lawyers, journalists or civil right activists. Different aid programmes had helped with their evacuation and continue to cover their housing and basic needs in Athens.

Together with our fixer Eleni Korovila, I contacted the Melissa Network, one of several local centres that help Afghan women and their families. In addition to being a place for the women to meet, Melissa - meaning "Beehive" in Greek - also offers a range of support services, including legal advice, tuition, councelling and community networking.

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Afghan MPs, in exile, pledge to work for women’s rights

Female politicians forced to flee following the Taliban takeover arrive in Greece as they plan to relocate to the West.

When Taliban fighters ransacked Shagufa Noorzai’s home on August 29, she was not there.

The member of parliament from Helmand province had gone into hiding following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, as US and NATO troops were withdrawing from the country after 20 years of war.

“I was in a washroom without a window for 15 days,” she told Al Jazeera. “Even my family didn’t know where I was … The Taliban told my father, ‘tell her to come out of hiding and we will work with her’.”

Homa Ahmadi, who represented Logar province in parliament three times, said “They [the Taliban] are going to kill people who were working in government and they will do it quietly.”

“They break into people’s homes to show people that they have no rights, and to create fear that they can take whatever they want.”

Day after retaking Afghanistan, the Taliban announced a “general amnesty” for government workers, but reports have emerged of Taliban fighters killing members of ethnic Hazara men and torturing journalists. However, top Taliban leadership has reiterated that they will not target their opponents.

Noorzai and Ahmadi are among more than a dozen female MPs and their families who have arrived in Athens, the Greek capital, after being evacuated from Afghanistan in the past several weeks with the help of two non-governmental organisations, Melissa Network and Human Rights 360.

“We created a list of 150 women of influence who were mostly on death lists, who were facing tremendous risks and were willing to take any risk in the process of accessing the airport or exiting the country,” says Melissa co-founder Nadina Christopoulou.

“What they kept telling us before the withdrawal of US troops was [that] going back home means facing certain death.”

Greek diplomatic sources put the figure of evacuees at 177 so far, which includes female lawyers and judges arriving by chartered flight this month.

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Dissident Afghan women find safe haven in Greece and launch 'Afghan Women's Parliament in exile'

In recent months, Greece has welcomed many high-profile Afghan dissidents fleeing the country. Since September 2021 the city of Athens has provided safe haven for more than 700 of Afghanistan’s female judges, lawmakers, journalists and lawyers, together with their families. They have arrived with the help of NGOs, international aid groups and several individuals who lobbied Greek leaders to remove from Afghanistan the people whose lives people were most at risk, meaning women who represented the democratic society of Afghanistan that is no longer welcome after the Taliban takeover in August.

According to Politico, Ahmed Khan, an American philanthropist, is one of those individuals, who back in September started coordinating a weeks-long effort to get dozens of female Afghanis and their families to Greece after securing almost instantaneous authorization from Greek officials. Kahn coordinated with the Greek government to cover the cost of the food, lodging and health insurance for the evacuees and with the ministry of Migration to organize the operation. This happened in late September and since then, several groups of evacuees have fled Afghanistan for Greece. The exchange opened a pathway that Khan would use to bring more and more high-profile Afghan women to Greece. It was, Khan said, a “flawless partnership.” And, he added, it reflected an openness he saw from smaller governments that was missing from the world’s biggest economic powers.

Many non-governmental organizations, such as Melissa Network, Mina’s List and Human Rights 360 have carried out evacuations in cooperation with the Greek government. One of the first evacuation operations that became widely known was in October of 2021, when twenty-six female judges and lawyers and their families arrived in Athens from Afghanistan via the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Their safe transfer to Greece was carried out with the assistance of President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. The women were welcomed at the Athens international airport where they were registered and taken to apartments provided under the ESTIA program of the ministry for Migration.

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Giannis's NBA triumph forces Athens to confront its past

Giannis Tzikas was popping champagne bottles. Giannis Antetokounmpo had just led the Milwaukee Bucks to victory in the NBA final against the Phoenix Suns, and Tzikas was celebrating with a small group of youths, some of them donning basketball gear.

An emotional Tzikas, who once gave Antetokounmpo free sandwiches from his café and encouraged him to keep up his training schedule on nearby basketball courts, sang the praises of the NBA superstar.

“He doesn’t owe anybody a thing. He did it all himself,” said Tzikas.

In Sepolia, like in much of Greece, Antetokounmpo is helping restore a sense of national pride. The country’s sense of worth took a beating during its ten-year economic crisis that seemed to be just coming to an end when the coronavirus pandemic hit early last year.

The downturn nearly hurled the country into bankruptcy and sent hundreds of thousands of Greeks abroad to find work. With the unemployment rate still hovering around 17 percent, job prospects for many remain weak.

Now, the child of Nigerian migrants, who for the most part lived in the country illegally, Antetokounmpo is helping Greece recover some of its lost self-confidence.

He is inspiring many in Greece, with his story of beating the odds to reach the top. His climb from a life of poverty and selling trinkets on the streets to survive to winning the NBA final and being crowned MVP is seen in Greece as being a national success.

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She arrived with nothing. Now this Iranian woman feeds Athens' homeless

Leaning over the simmering pot of ghormez sabzi - an Iranian dish of pureed dark green vegetables, chunks of meat and typical Iranian spices - Mahboubeh Tavakoli, 33, removes the lid and closes her eyes.

As the fragrant steam rises, she inhales deeply. It’s nearly ready. Quickly placing the lid back on the pot, she lowers the heat and turns her attention to an even larger pot full of rice sitting on a back burner.

Today, Tavakoli is making lunch for a dozen unaccompanied minor girls, asylum seekers under the age of 18 who have arrived in Greece alone.

After she finishes with the lunch, she will begin making their dinner before leaving the shelter to attend English and Greek language classes and an art therapy workshop at the Melissa Network, a centre for migrant women in Greece only ten minutes down the street.

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Melissa Network: a hive built by migrant women

This is Melissa Network, an organization which began as a network for migrant women in Athens and blossomed into a place of growth, knowledge and solidarity for refugee girls and women.

When it started several years ago, the organization, which takes its name from the Greek word for honeybee due to the buzzing hive of activity it’s always been, was a place to help migrant women network and empower themselves. The offices near Victoria Square in the Greek capital meant that when the refugee crisis unfolded, the migrant women who were members of the initiative found themselves unexpectedly at its forefront.

Refugee children camping out in the park

They began by making breakfasts for the hundreds of refugee children that camped out in a nearby park in 2015, waiting for passage to the northern border. But it felt like it was never enough. Having seen the enormous potential of migrant women, Melissa Network decided to work with them and offer something more. “Migrant women are integrators and multipliers. Whatever little you give them they will multiply in no time”, says Nadina Christopoulou, one of the co-founders of Melissa Network.

And so they began by offering classes, workshops, therapy, healing, skill-building, network building and strategic support to help the women in their new lives.

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Athens' Parliament of Exiled Afghan Women: Making Their Voices Be Heard

Last year, as the Taliban advanced on Kabul, a young politician organized a protest in front of the Defense Ministry. She stood on the street with a cardboard sign bearing her message to the people in the provinces as they fell, one after another: "Stay strong."

The woman’s name is Shagufa Noorzai, 29, and she was one of the youngest lawmakers in the Afghan parliament at the time.

Only a short time later, Noorzai had to flee the Taliban in Kabul. She hid for 10 days with friends and then for a month in her apartment. The Taliban searched for her and nearly caught her. When her father opened the door one morning, they beat him and stole Noorzai’s armored work car that her chauffeur had used to drive her to the parliament in Kabul each day. But parliament hasn’t convened since the arrival of the Taliban.

First, Noorzai lost her office, then her job and her income – and now she has also lost her country. Noorzai now lives in Greece, in the capital of Athens, where she shares her story.

On a recent morning, a minibus drives her through the Athens suburbs for two hours together with other Kabul politicians before stopping in a narrow street near Omonia Square, in the center of the city. The women get out. Noorzai wears a colorfully embroidered coat, a headscarf and high heels.

She has arrived at her new job: The Afghan Women's Parliamentarians Network. Her new calling is to speak out so that things aren’t forgotten.

She steps into the building’s second floor, where the Afghan parliament in exile is headquartered. The space has been provided by Melissa Network, a Greek aid organization. Two dozen Afghan women, who until recently held seats in the Afghan parliament, move up the stairs. They chat. The atmosphere is confident. They are young and old. Some of the women are from important political families, while others are representatives of minorities.