A team of six teen Afghanistani girls has been prevented from fully participate in an outside robotics competition , because they could not get visas to the United States . Their robot will still be able to compete , and the girls can engage by video . The reasons for the determination are not public , but it has incense stellar technical school figures and counter - terrorism experts , and critics allege it will undermine science Education Department and relation between the West and Muslim land .
TheFIRST Global Challengeis an opportunity for mellow school students worldwide to develop skills in robotics . Teams from more than 100 countries will be grouped together in threes to take shape confederation to work engineering challenges such as hive away and trickle piss . The object is to make grow skills not only in programming and robotlike design , but in co - run with strangers from other nations .
An all - girl squad from three high schools in Herat , westerly Afghanistan , hoped to take part and designed a robot capable of sorting ball into buckets to prove their suitability . “ We want to develop and search our mind and creativeness and perhaps uncover the mastermind inside of each one of us , ” the team ’s statementreads . The materials other squad used as the basis for their automaton were held up by US customs , so the Afghan girls exercise work up home - made motorized cars out of composition board and mucilaginous tape .
One - hebdomad visa for entry into the United States were required , and the girls twice made the severe journey to Kabul to be interview at the US Embassy . double they were rejected . This was despite their interviews having been organized byRoya Mahboob , father of software company Citadel , with the squad mentor by scholarly person from Carnegie Mellon University . Mahboob has stated that the girls were devastate , tellingForbesthey were “ shout all day ” .
After months of checking , the US State Department appears to have accepted that the robot the missy were finally able to construct will not suddenly switch from sort out balls into buckets to full terminator fashion , and has allowed their creation to take part .
On the event ’s Facebook pageboy , First Global president and former representative Joe Sestak issued astatement , expressing abstruse sorrowfulness , but refusing to criticize the State Department , and give thanks their approval of visa for the bulk of squad , including those from area often block entryway to the United States .
Others have not been so restrained , with many taking to Twitter to pour scorn on the conclusion .
The Gambian team ’s visa were also refuse , and days before they require to depart , several other countries remain in limbo . The Afghan and Gambian robots will be operated by Americans with ancestry in those area , under distant superintendence from the teams in the countries of stemma .
After the death of the World Trade Center , many commentator noted discrimination against women , particularly in education , in the countries from which the plan of attack were coming . impart girls a chance of an education was a near matter in its own right , they fence , but also might lead to areduction in violencein the long full term .
Fears that this might form may bethe reasonterrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of girls from physics examsin 2014 . Supporters of interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan often promoted increased educational opportunity for girls as one of themajor justification .
Despite this , school enrollments fell well in Herat between 2005 and 2011 , and literacy is just25 percent(16 per centum for women ) , so these girls were particularly lucky to get an education .
The State Department does not unfreeze reasons for its visa denials , so it ’s not vindicated whether the little girl were considered potential terrorists , or thought likely to try on and settle in America . Since they would have been flying in , their luggage would have been good checked , and a week is not a long clock time for the great unwashed new to a area to acquire artillery or find safe position to live , particularly while engage in a demanding scientific discipline competitor . Statistically , terrorism , particularly in the West , is overpoweringly conduct by man , so even a random group of Afghan women would not be particularly high - jeopardy .
Moreover , in a country where the Taliban threaten schoolgirl with acid attacks , female STEM student are seldom friends of extremists .
On the other hand , the decision has sent a message , not only to the girls themselves but to all Afghans , that no matter how much they achieve , America is not likely to accept them , even temporarily . The value of this as a recruitment cock is unlikely to be missed by extremist .
