Latest Update: Southampton resident earns King Charles III Coronation Medal

Some of the Afghan women who escaped the Taliban with help of Southampton’s Laura Robinson will be in Toronto Feb. 19 to celebrate when she receives a King Charles III Coronation Medal.

Laura Robinson had no idea that her research into safety of women’s sports and background as an elite athlete would help Afghan women athletes flee the Taliban, or lead to a phone call in her Southampton kitchen from “very frightened Afghan women, literally hiding in their basement while the Taliban was upstairs.”

But that’s what happened in August 2021, and now, Robinson’s work with Senator Marilou McPhedran to help those women, and many more and their families flee Afghanistan, earned her a King Charles III Coronation Medal.
The medal honours individuals who have made a significant impact on Canadian society or brought international recognition to the country. Robinson was nominated by Senator McPhedran who will present the medal to her Feb. 19 in Toronto.

Robinson said she was researching safe sport – how athletes are vulnerable to abuse – for Senator McPhedran in 2021 when, at the end of a phone call with a UN child trafficking expert on another issue, the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, which had happened two days earlier, came up.

“I knew that the women soccer players in Afghanistan had reported the president of the Afghan Soccer Federation for sexual abuse – imagine turning in a guy that was actually a warlord – and I knew they were at great risk,” Robinson said in a Feb. 11 telephone interview.

Robinson said she received a list of women soccer players and other women who were in danger, and with Senator McPhedran’s team and other experts, was able to get the woman, and in some cases family members, to the airport in Kabul to meet up with Canadian military for flights to freedom.

We weren’t able to get everyone out before a suicide bomber blew up the airport and ended flights,” she said, estimating that approximately 35 players and families escaped, and another 30 cyclists were relocated to Canada by FIFI, and another 30 women cyclists escaped to Italy, Switzerland and France.

She estimates that 35 players and six family members escaped but there were at least 30 more who needed help as the Taliban was randomly rounding up women on the streets.

“I still had three – they weren’t just soccer players – there were lawyers and some had prosecuted the Taliban who knew what they looked like, so I had three very frightened young women who couldn’t get out before the suicide bomber at the airport, and I’m happy to say, we got all three of them out about two months later,” Robinson said.

Over the past few years, Robinson’s work to help Afghan refugees has not stopped as she gets endless emails from women “begging for help to get out of an absolute nightmare.”

We got more people out. We got four very high-risk women out last year through private sponsorship. One was an OBGYN who advocated for birth control who got a hand-delivered death letter from the Taliban.”

Robinson remains in contact with many of the women she helped and said three of the women have had babies in Canada and she’s known as “auntie” to dozens of young women, some of who will attend a small Feb. 19 ceremony when Robison receives her medal, and again at larger celebratory fundraising dinner this April in support of Afghan women.

Robinson remains an active cyclist, and is co-founder of the Southampton Cultural Heritage Conservancy that’s mandate is to educate and engage the community in preservation and conservation.