Women's rights in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule

Afghanistan: Girls' education activist arrested by Taliban

A prominent Afghan campaigner for female education has been arrested by the Taliban, even as teenage girls and women remain barred from classrooms.

Matiullah Wesa, 30, had often received threats - he has spent years travelling across Afghanistan trying to improve access to education for all children.

The Taliban did not say why Mr Wesa is in custody. His house was also raided.

His arrest follows the detention of a number of other activists who have been campaigning for women's education.

In February Prof Ismail Mashal, an outspoken critic of the Taliban government's ban on education for women, was arrested in Kabul while handing out free books. He was freed on 5 March but has not spoken out since then.

Mr Wesa is one of the most prominent education activists in Afghanistan and, via his charity PenPath, has been campaigning for girls' right to study since the Taliban barred female education in 2021.

His last tweet - on Monday, the day of his arrest - was a photo of women volunteers for PenPath "asking for the Islamic rights to education for their daughters".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65095663

Afganistan even more pathetic than Romania. Muslims should be fighting to get this guy out of prison if being supported by women is the banner raising headline.
 
Taliban closes Afghan women-run radio station for ‘playing music’
Sadai Banowan station head denies any violation, saying there was no need for the closure and called it a conspiracy.

A women-run radio station in Afghanistan’s northeast has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said.

Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only women-run station and started 10 years ago. It has eight staff, six of them female.

Moezuddin Ahmadi, the director for Information and Culture in Badakhshan province, said the station violated the “laws and regulations of the Islamic Emirate” several times by broadcasting songs and music during Ramadan and was shuttered because of the breach.

“If this radio station accepts the policy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and gives a guarantee that it will not repeat such a thing again, we will allow it to operate again,” said Ahmadi.

Station head Najia Sorosh denied there was any violation, saying there was no need for the closure and called it a conspiracy. The Taliban “told us that you have broadcast music. We have not broadcast any kind of music,” she said.

Sorosh said at 11:40 am on Thursday (7:10 GMT), representatives from the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Vice and Virtue Directorate arrived at the station and shut it down.

...
Al-Jazeera
 
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday condemned Afghanistan's Taliban authorities for banning Afghan women from working for the United Nations and called for the decision to be immediately revoked.

"This is a violation of the inalienable fundamental human rights of women," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on behalf of the secretary-general.

The UN mission in Afghanistan said that, although it could not accept the decision, it had told all Afghan staff not to report to the office until further notice for safety reasons.

Taliban administration spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. The Taliban administration, which seized power as US-led forces withdrew, says it respects women's rights in line with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Reuters
 
In a world that often seems divided by darkness, the quest for light takes many forms. For Afghanistan, a nation torn by decades of conflict, the pursuit of enlightenment through education has become a battleground of ideologies and aspirations. At the heart of this struggle, recent remarks by Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abaad Stanikzai have ignited a conversation that transcends borders and politics, touching the very essence of human rights and development.

In an unexpected deviation from the norm, Stanikzai called education 'obligatory' for the nation's advancement, stressing its importance for both girls and boys. This statement, made in September, marked a significant contrast to the prevailing Taliban policies that have severely restricted women's access to education since their ascent to power over two years ago. The Taliban's approach, allowing only religious education for girls and escalating the number of religious schools, has not only stifled dreams but also isolated Afghanistan on the global stage. Amidst a humanitarian crisis, with millions in dire need of aid and education, Stanikzai's comments offer a glimpse into the internal conflicts within the Taliban regarding the path forward.

The international community has watched with bated breath as the Taliban's policies unravel decades of progress for Afghan women and girls. The ban on education beyond the sixth grade and at the university level remains a stark symbol of the regime's repressive stance, drawing widespread condemnation. In this context, Stanikzai's critique of those who deprive education as 'oppressive and unjust' presents a paradox. It reflects a divide within the Taliban itself, between those who recognize the imperative of education for national development and those who cling to a rigid interpretation of Islamic law that restricts women's roles in society. This internal conflict is mirrored on the international stage, where engagement with the Taliban is seen as both a necessity for stability and a contentious endorsement of their governance.

Despite Stanikzai's assertions, the reality for Afghan women and girls remains grim. The continued ban on their education beyond elementary levels speaks louder than words, underscoring the challenges of translating rhetoric into action. The question remains: Can these remarks signal the beginning of a meaningful policy shift, or are they merely an attempt to placate international critics while maintaining a status quo that suppresses half the population's potential? As Afghanistan teeters on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, the answer to this question holds the key not only to the country's future but to the very soul of its people.

The journey towards enlightenment, fraught with obstacles and contradictions, continues to unfold in Afghanistan. In the interplay of darkness and light, the path forward remains uncertain, guided by the flickers of hope that emerge from the most unexpected sources. The world watches, waits, and wonders whether these sparks will ignite a flame of change or be extinguished by the winds of resistance.

Source: BNN

 
Actions speak louder than words. It's up to them to make sure Afghan women have real opportunities.
 

In Afghanistan, women and children bearing worst of hunger crisis​

Afghanistan is one of several countries around the world in the grip of a food crisis, where a mix of politics, economics and nature’s ravages are taking a heavy toll on vast sections of a vulnerable population.

In a country emerging from decades of war and turmoil, women and children are among those particularly impacted by biting food insecurity, according to the UN’s World Food Program (WFP).

“Some of the most affected by the hunger crisis at the moment are women and girls,” Philippe Kropf, WFP’s head of communications in Afghanistan, told Anadolu.

Currently, a third of the Afghan population, or nearly 16 million people, are going hungry, and every province is at crisis levels of food insecurity, or higher, according to the UN agency.

“We have 15.8 million people in acute food insecurity, which includes 3.5 million people facing emergency levels of food insecurity,” Kropf said.

UN figures paint a grim picture for women and girls, with an estimated 1 million malnourished, pregnant and breastfeeding women in Afghanistan in 2023.

Around 2 million girls and boys under the age of 5 were facing moderate acute malnutrition, and nearly 860,000 girls and boys under 5 had severe acute malnutrition.

“Severe acute malnutrition is one of the worst cases, where children do, unfortunately, die regularly,” said Kropf.

Crisis of access

One stark difference when comparing Afghanistan to other countries grappling with food crises is the level of availability.

In Afghanistan, according to the WFP, food is available in most parts of the country, even in the smaller remote districts.

The challenge is that families, including, and in most cases, women and girls, cannot access it because they do not have the money to buy it.

“Afghanistan is a crisis where the most vulnerable women and children cannot access the food that is on the market,” Kropf explained.

Curbs imposed on women’s employment have severely impacted households where women are the main providers.

Many of these are women and widows who are currently not able to go out to work, he said.

Source: Anadolu Agency
 

Girls Express Hopes and Dreams for New Academic Year

With the start of the new academic year just six days away, several girls who have missed out on education are voicing their concerns over the ongoing school closures, expressing a strong desire to return to their studies.

They emphasize their unwillingness to endure the hardships they faced over the past two years, marked by a lack of access to education.

Yalda, who was close to completing the tenth grade, has found solace in painting during her time away from school.

In a conversation with a TOLOnews reporter, she shared her readiness for the new academic year, along with her hopes to rejoin her classmates soon.

"I hope this year marks my return to school; we're prepared, having purchased school uniforms, notebooks, pens, and books. I've also been keeping in touch with my friends," Yalda added.

For many girl students, the thought of schools reopening and returning to their studies has become a dream.

Nourin, another student, shared her hopes: "This year, we aim not to revisit the bitter experiences of the past but to concentrate on realizing our future dreams and aspirations."

Addressing the ongoing closure of schools, Bahar, another student, appealed to the Islamic Emirate: "I urge the authorities to reopen the schools for us. I don't want to face disappointment as I did last year, being turned away at the school gates."

University professors have highlighted the broader societal implications of continued school closures.

Professor Parviz Khalili said: "With each day that girls are barred from education, Afghanistan confronts increasing challenges and problems."

Although the Islamic Emirate has not recently commented on the reopening of schools for girls in the new academic year, it has previously stated that the closure of schools and universities for girls is temporary, with efforts underway to reopen them.

 

Taliban vow to start stoning women to death in public for adultery in Afghanistan, as supreme leader blasts the West's support for women's rights​


The Taliban will soon start stoning women to death in public, the radical group's Supreme Leader announced as he declared war against Western democracy.

Addressing Western officials in a voice message broadcast on state TV Saturday, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada called the Western human rights defenders 'representatives of the devil'.

'You say it's a violation of women's rights when we stone them to death. But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery,' he told the West in his harshest comments since taking over Afghanistan in 2021.

"We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public,' he announced.

'These are all against your democracy but we will continue doing it.

'We both say we defend human rights – we do it as God's representative and you as the devil's,' he added.

'You are treating women like animals, are these your rights?'

Afghanistan's state TV, now controlled by the Taliban, airs voice messages claiming to be from Akhundzada, who has never been seen in public.

In a further affront to international advocacy for women's rights, Akhundzada criticised the calls for such rights as contradictory to the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.

'Do women want the rights that Westerners are talking about?

'They are against Sharia and clerics' opinions, the clerics who toppled Western democracy,' he asserted.

'One is God's league and another one is the devil's and we are on God's side,' he claimed.

The Taliban, despite initial promises of a more moderate rule, began carrying out severe punishments in public shortly after coming to power.

The punishments are similar to those during their previous rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Akhundzada has called the Taliban foot soldiers to be resilient in opposing women's rights and said the war against Western democracy and values will continue for decades to come.

'I told the Mujahedin that we tell the Westerners that we fought against you for 20 years and we will fight 20 and even more years against you' he said.

'Taking over Kabul did not mean we would now sit in offices and drink tea.

'It did not finish (when you left), we will now bring Sharia into action on this land,' he warned.

He criticised Western human rights values and women's freedoms, saying Taliban religious scholars and clerics would persistently resist the West and its form of democracy in Afghanistan.

His comments have sparked outrage among Afghans, prompting some to urge the international community to escalate pressure on the Taliban.

Naseer Faiq, Charge d'Affaires of Afghanistan to the United Nations, said that deciding the fate of the Afghans without their consent 'is not acceptable'.

'At what cost? For over two decades, under this slogan, thousands of innocent Afghans, including brainwashed Taliban, have been killed, the country destroyed, millions forced to migrate, and Afghanistan plunged into a deep crisis,' he said in a post on X, referring to Akhundzada's comments

'Isn't that enough? Profiting from the Afghan people's blood is unacceptable and forbidden in Islam,' he added.

The Taliban regained power in August 2021, following the collapse of the internationally supported government and the withdrawal of all US-led Western troops after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war.

Akhundzada has halted girls' education in Afghanistan beyond the sixth grade and imposed growing restrictions on women's participation in public and private workplaces, including barring them from employment with the United Nations and other aid organisations.

Women are prohibited from taking long road and air trips without a male relative accompanying them, and they are restricted from visiting public places such as parks, gyms, and bathhouses.

The Taliban leader justifies these measures, asserting that they are following Afghan culture and Islamic principles.

Since leaders of the impoverished country with one of the world's most oppressed people seized power by force, Afghanistan's economy has collapsed and pushed millions into poverty.

 
I feel disgust towards such animals, I don't know when Afghan people will be free from Talibans.
 
Hundreds of cases of femicide recorded in Afghanistan since Taliban takeover are ‘tip of the iceberg’

The 300-plus reported cases of Afghan women being killed by men since the Taliban seized power are just “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the true scale of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, according to new data analysis.

Open-source investigators at the Centre of Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project combed through social media and news sites to record 332 reported cases of femicide since the Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021.

The analysis, which is one of the first attempts to try to collect data on the levels of sexual and physical violence against women in Afghanistan, also found 840 women and girls had been subject to gender-based violence from 1 January 2022 – when Afghan Witness began collating data – to 30 June this year, almost one a day.

More than half of the reported cases said that Taliban officials were responsible. Analysis of crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Taliban revealed 115 incidents of sexual violence, including forced marriage, sexual slavery, assault and rape.

Another 73 incidents concerned non-sexual violence and torture, while 113 involved the reported arrests of women, many for flouting the regime’s repressive policies on women and girls, which include forbidding them to travel significant distances without a male guardian.

The Taliban’s shutdown of most independent media outlets and the widespread restriction and persecution of journalists – as well as continuing political repression and online intimidation – means that the number of cases reported is likely to be a vast underestimation of the true scale of death and violence inflicted on Afghan women, according to David Osborn, the project director of Afghan Witness.

“What we have collected is only the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “[It is] more and more difficult for Afghan women to speak out and for us to document gender-based violence and the impact of Taliban rule on women and girls.”

In the three years since seizing power from the US-backed government, the Taliban have imposed what human rights groups are calling a “gender apartheid” on Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls, excluding them from almost every aspect of public life and denying them access to the justice system.

Women and girls are blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons; and told to comply with a strict dress code.

The Taliban have also announced the reintroduction of the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.

A UN survey last December found that 76% of Afghan women and girls who responded classed their mental health since the Taliban seized power as “bad” or “very bad”, reporting insomnia, depression, anxiety, loss of appetite and headaches as a result of their trauma.

In response to repressive Taliban policies, some women have continued to resist, staging a series of street protests in Kabul and other major cities. Last month, the Guardian published accounts from female protesters who described how they were beaten, abused or jailed for speaking out – one video viewed by the Guardian appeared to show a female protester being raped inside a Taliban jail.

Afghan Witness’s open-source data analysis also chronicles how public protests against the Taliban regime have declined significantly over the past three years.

The research shows that in the months after the 2021 Taliban takeover, 88% of protests were held outdoors. This dropped to 49% in 2022 and continued to fall. Now 94% of demonstrations are held online, often with locations and identities hidden.

The Taliban also appear to have tightened their enforcement of certain restrictions over the past year. Afghan Witness verified footage of women being arrested “en masse” in Kabul in January 2024, allegedly for failing to comply with hijab rules. Some young women who said that they were arrested for “bad hijab’’ also say they were subject to violence and sexual assault while in detention.

SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/global-...since-taliban-takeover-are-tip-of-the-iceberg
 
1.4 mn girls banned from Afghan schools since Taliban return: UNESCO

At least 1.4 million girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to secondary education since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, with the future of an entire generation now "in jeopardy", the United Nations' cultural agency said Thursday.

Access to primary education has also fallen sharply, with 1.1 million fewer girls and boys attending school, UNESCO said in a statement as the Taliban authorities marked three years since retaking Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.

"UNESCO is alarmed by the harmful consequences of this increasingly massive drop-out rate, which could lead to a rise in child labour and early marriage," the agency said.

"In just three years, the de facto authorities have almost wiped out two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan, and the future of an entire generation is now in jeopardy."

There are now nearly 2.5 million girls deprived of their right to education, representing 80 percent of Afghan school-age girls, the UN agency said.

The Taliban administration, which is not recognised by any other country, has imposed restrictions on women that the UN has described as "gender apartheid."

Afghanistan is the only country in the world to stop girls and women attending secondary schools and universities.

"As a result of bans imposed by the de facto authorities, at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education since 2021," UNESCO said.

This represents an increase of 300,000 since the previous count carried out by the UN agency in April 2023.

UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay urged the international community to remain mobilised "to obtain the unconditional reopening of schools and universities to Afghan girls and women."

The number of primary pupils has also fallen. Afghanistan had only 5.7 million girls and boys in primary school in 2022, compared with 6.8 million in 2019, UNESCO said.

The UN agency blamed the drop on the authorities' decision to ban female teachers from teaching boys as well as the lack of incentive for parents to send children to school.

Enrolment in higher education in equally concerning, the statement said, adding that the number of university students had decreased by 53 percent since 2021.

"As a result, the country will rapidly face a shortage of graduates trained for the most highly-skilled jobs, which will only exacerbate development problems," UNESCO said.


Dunya News
 
Back
Top