Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, through her namesake foundation The Mary Foundation (or Mary Fonden in Danish), has donated to an Afghanistan women’s crisis centre after hearing a TV 2 programme reporter’s account from the country.
The Crown Princess heard TV 2 correspondent Simi Jan’s troubling report on Fatima during November’s Children’s Day in Copenhagen.
Fatima’s story was that of a five-year-old being sold to an older, disabled man by her father for around 24,000 Danish kroner (or roughly £2,863). When she was 12, Fatima was sent to live with the man where she was beaten and mistreated for two years.
Fatima fled from the home and ended up in a Kabul shelter. Had her family found her before she arrived at the shelter, she would have been killed.
Fatima’s story is just one of many young girls and women being abused, mistreated, and sold in the country, and it tugged on the heart of Crown Princess Mary – a passionate advocate of women’s rights.
The Mary Foundation also works to help victims of domestic violence, with the issue being one of their three major projects (alongside loneliness and bullying/well-being). As such, the organisation spoke to the Danish Embassy in Kabul, UN Women and Danner, among others, to investigate the work of the Afghanistan crisis centre. With positive feedback, the Mary Foundation said it was easy to select the Women’s Crisis Center as the recipient of the Mary Foundation special donation 2018.
Crown Princess Mary remarked about the Mary Foundation’s choice to donate to the Kabul centre, “Women’s rights in Afghanistan are under pressure at many levels. Afghan women are struggling with devastating and strong social norms that make them very vulnerable. Mary Akrami has dedicated her life to helping women and their children and is a strong spokeswoman in the struggle to change the conditions for women in Afghanistan. It requires great courage and has at the same time made her a goal for those who do not want change. With the Mary Foundation’s special donation, we want to support her impressive and great work.”
The organisation donated 50,000 USD to the Women’s Crisis Center which was founded in 2003 by Mary Akrami and is part of the independent Afghan Women Skills Development Center. It was the country’s first women’s crisis centre.
Akrami spoke about the donation, “I am deeply grateful and very happy for the great donation. It means a great deal because of the basic rights of the sisters, such as schooling, access to the doctor and the court over their own body. That they are not treated as a man’s property, but as equal individuals. This donation will be spent on education, medical care, legal assistance and increased security. With more money, I can also bring more people into the shelter, and that means the world for women in life-threatening situations.”
