Women's eroding rights in Afghanistan

Under the Taliban regime that came into power last year in Afghanistan the lack of women’s rights is again official policy. In one of its most-recent decrees, the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue ordered women presenters on television to cover their faces stating this ‘decision was final’ without room for discussion.

Last month, Tolo News anchor Nesar Nabil wore a face mask on television in Kabul protesting the regime’s decree forcing female presenters to cover their faces. Nabil and other male presenters at major news channels in Afghanistan wore masks to show solidarity with their female colleagues. The regime has stated violations of this decree will result in punishment for male family members - essentially indicating that men have a right to control women and to police their movement and bodies.

Meanwhile, this decree that blatantly violates freedom of expression and personal autonomy has prompted the #FreeHerFace campaign on social media with male journalists among other supporters posting pictures with their faces covered in solidarity with women. Making the veil mandatory is a ‘symbol of gender apartheid’ as a former member of the Afghan parliament and a women’s rights activist stated on Facebook.

Protests continue in Afghanistan as educated urban women reject new directives based on ultra-conservative interpretations of Sharia law calling for reducing their rights and freedoms. For one, this makes clear resistance to repressive measures will likely take root and increase because the country the Taliban governs is very different from Afghanistan of the 1990s. Afghan women and men refuse to be silenced into submission because many are prepared to pay a high price for securing freedom for future generations.

Earlier, the Taliban had issued another guideline preventing women from travelling distances greater than forty-five miles from their home without a close relative. Women from rural areas have expressed concern that Taliban control has translated into more restrictions when it comes to pursuing education, employment, even choosing whom they marry, travelling and resulting in increased violence towards women.

In Ghazni, a Taliban ban on education states girls in grades 7 to 12 have to stay home, according to a Human Right Watch report. University students, including medical students must stay home, crushing women’s professional aspirations. There is fear, uncertainty and a brain drain making young people feel hopeless. Depriving women of the ability to make choices not only erodes identity and livelihoods but deprives the country of human resources and talent.

Barriers to employment, education and healthcare have begun to result in a financial crisis for women not allowed to work - even women farmers cannot work and must stay home.

The consequence is poverty, malnutrition and starvation - some families have sold their children into marriages to feed other family members; others in desperation have sold their kidneys to buy food. Almost 75% of the previous government’s budget was met through foreign donor assistance which ceased shortly before the Taliban takeover. With no cash, employment, international donor money and high food prices, widows and female breadwinners are challenged to find avenues to feed their families.

Western countries that had supported Afghanistan until last year stated they would exercise influence over the Taliban and use development aid and garnering political legitimacy as levers but the evidence of violations is mounting and the Taliban have not been forced into changing course.

Take a look at the iconic image of an Afghan TV presenter at Tolo News, clearly distressed, holding her head in her left hand, dressed in a coat and hijab. Every piece of clothing she wears from head-to-toe is black; a visual metaphor for the forces of darkness and patriarchy that women must fight against after more than twenty years of hard-won gains. The strain of mustering strength for another fight is visible. This is a shameful failure of the western post-war construction toolkit and the lack of political will to tackle the Taliban.

These seemingly never-ending harsh restrictions - also in place between 1996 and 2001, when the Taliban banned women from life and education - enforcing rules of conduct and dress codes for women, restricting movement, forbidding girls from going to school, and curtailing women from full and equal participation in public life are the realities many are living through in Afghanistan.

Teachers have gone back to conducting lessons in clandestine schools for girls so that they are not left behind echoing the nineties when underground schools were functioning. Rights activists have stood their ground despite the risk of beatings and imprisonment personifying bravery and resilience. Afghan women professionals and sportswomen have been honoured with international human rights awards for empowering other women.

Journalists continue their work holding the powerful to account despite illegal detention, vicious beatings and abuse. That freedom of expression and pursuit of human rights have become centric to the aspirations of a generation with the desire to achieve more, and achieve better is clear.

Inhumane rules curtailing women’s rights underscore two aspects. One, the regime is determined to roll back women’s rights and has no intention to fulfill its promise to ensure girls attend school. And, second the removal of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs after the Taliban took power in August 2021 indicates without doubt that the identity and presence of women is systematically being eliminated.

The fight for preserving rights now requires action from the international community, not promises.

It must not forget Afghanistan even while there is a brutal war raging in Ukraine which warrants immediate assistance and attention. It must pressure the Taliban regime more strongly to end blatant violations making this a condition for receiving economic assistance and political recognition. It must offer expert assistance to the leadership to set a clear plan of action for educating girls. Do not abandon the hope that women and girls will change things in the future if they have the tools to do so. Pressure Pakistan as a neighbour to ensure they bring these violations into sharper focus with senior leaders in Kabul with whom they share a long-standing relationship. When human development and rights are made prerequisites, even the most loathsome regimes with mounting economic and military challenges could be pressured to relent.

Forgetting the women of Afghanistan is not an option. When the rights of half the population are brutally eroded in a country that has only known decades of civil strife and a deadly war on terror followed by fragile governance structures undermined by corruption, the wider consequences of taking yet another young generation backwards will be felt not only within Afghanistan but regionally (where like-minded ideologues are neighbours) and globally - whether those consequences translate as a massive exodus to the west or renewed militancy and radicalisation.

In 2011, Afghanistan was the most dangerous country to be a woman with high levels of violence, poverty and poor healthcare. Despite hard earned rights over twenty-years women are being subjected to repressive measures backsliding on progress made.

When Mahbouba Seraj, a women’s rights activist was recently asked what message she had for international stakeholders who have been in Afghanistan for the last twenty-years, she was livid: “I’m going to say - really - shame on you,” she said. “I’m going to say to the whole world, shame on you.”

This response explains why Afghans are frustrated with the gap between the international community’s promise and its reality.

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