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UNITED NATIONS, Nov 15 (IPS) - It has been three years since the 2021 Taliban offensive and the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan continues to grow more dire. Human rights violations are committed by the Taliban insurgent group on a frequent basis, with gender-based discrimination and violence being regular occurrences for millions of Afghan women. Gender inequalities are pervasive, with freedom of speech and mobility being significantly limited. The humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by widespread impunity enjoyed by members of the Taliban.
Shortly after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, a number of fundamental rights were stripped from over 14 million women that reside in the country. In 2023, the United Nations (UN) dubbed Afghanistan as the most socially and culturally repressive nation for women's rights in the world.
The Taliban has imposed widespread violations of economic independence for all Afghan women. Women have been removed from their positions in all sectors of the workforce, with limited exceptions in healthcare and education. However, most employers opt to hire men in these fields. Women-owned businesses such as hair salons were forcibly shut down.
"This isn't about getting your hair and nails done. This is about 60,000 women losing their jobs. This is about women losing one of the only places they could go for community and support after the Taliban systematically destroyed the whole system put in place to respond to domestic violence," says Heather Barr, associate women's rights director for Human Rights Watch (HRW).
According to a study conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), after the Taliban enforced these work restrictions, Afghanistan's economic output fell by over 20 percent, making it one of the poorest countries in the world. Banning women from work has also raised rates of poverty significantly, with 96 percent of the entire population being at risk of falling below the poverty line.
Additionally, millions of girls and women have experienced their rights to education being stripped away after the Taliban took rule. Currently, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls are barred from secondary and higher education. According to a report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), there are approximately 2.5 million girls who lack access to schooling, which equates to 80 percent of Afghanistan's population of young girls.
In the three years since the Taliban took power once more, they have erased decades of progress for education in Afghanistan, greatly threatening the future generation. "One thousand days out of school amounts to 3 billion learning hours lost or 1.5 million girls. This systematic exclusion is not only a blatant violation of their right to education, but also results in dwindling opportunities and deteriorating mental health. The rights of children, especially girls, cannot be held hostage to politics. Their lives, futures, hopes and dreams are hanging in the balance," said Executive-Director for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Catherine Russell.
Freedom of mobility for women in Afghanistan has also been severely restricted. One of the 80 edicts established by the Taliban that target women's rights bans all women from visiting public locations without the accompaniment of a male chaperone, referred to as a mahram. "The cumulative effect of the Taliban's edicts and behaviors has largely resulted in the imprisonment of women within the walls of their homes," said UN Women.
A dress code has also been implemented in the 80 Taliban edicts. If Afghan women are to leave their homes, they are expected to be covered from head-to-toe, with only their eyes exposed, usually in a burqa. Women are also prohibited from speaking in public. These decrees were met with significant backlash from Afghan women, humanitarian organizations, and world leaders alike. When asked for the reasoning behind this order, Khaled Hanafi, Taliban's acting minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, explained, "we want our sisters to live with dignity and safety".
"The Taliban are really taking a very significant step in terms of stripping away what autonomy still remains for women and girls. They're creating a situation where it's not even in the hands of women and girls themselves to make a decision about whether they're going to resist the Taliban on this, what types of risks they're willing to take with their own safety," Barr said.
Over the past three years, rates of forced and child marriages have risen sharply. According to a report from UNICEF, the lack of education for women and girls has caused an increase in reported child marriage.
"As most teenage girls are still not allowed to go back to school, the risk of child marriage is now even higher. Education is often the best protection against negative coping mechanisms such as child marriage and child labour," Henrietta Fore, former UNICEF Executive-Director, had said on the situation. Estimates from UNICEF also indicate that 28 percent of Afghan women aged 15-49 years old were married off in exchange for a dowry. There are also reports of girls as young as 20 days old being sold off.
Women who have protested these laws have been subjected to a host of human rights violations including enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and physical torture. For women who have had the vast majority of their civil rights taken away, the banning of peaceful protests and freedom of speech has been described as a crushing blow.
Nausheen, an Afghan women's rights protester, spoke to BBC reporters of the conditions the Taliban subjected her to when they detained her one year prior. "The Taliban dragged me into a vehicle saying ‘Why are you acting against us? This is an Islamic system.' They took me to a dark, frightening place and held me there, using terrible language against me. They also beat me. When we were released from detention we were not the same people as before and that's why we stopped protesting. I don't want to be humiliated any more because I'm a woman. It is better to die than to live like this," she said.
HRW reported cases of women being detained in poorly ventilated rooms, with little access to food, water. Furthermore, many women reported being denied contact with their families. According to Amnesty International, "UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan" recorded 1,600 incidents of detention-related human rights violations between January 2022 and July 2023, half of them constituting torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".
The Taliban has enjoyed vast levels of impunity for their crimes against women for decades. This seems most evident in the last three years, despite their claims to work closely with the international community to ensure the wellbeing and protection of rights for all Afghans. Despite condemnation and pressure from the international community to reverse their bans on girls' education and women's rights, largely the Taliban has only continued to double down and introduce increasingly restrictive laws limiting the spaces for half of the population. Afghan women and girls have faced dire conditions at the hands of Taliban personnel and have had their fundamental rights taken away from them. Access to justice has been denied for thousands of victims due to the Taliban abolishing existing laws that would lead to them being investigated or persecuted. HRW has pointed out that the existing legislature was replaced with a "narrow interpretation of sharia law", with previous judicial personnel being fired in favor of candidates that support the Taliban's policies.
The international community has urged the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to look into these violations of international humanitarian law.
"Afghan women and girls have faced some of the harshest consequences of Taliban rule, and they have led the difficult fight to protect rights in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, their pleas to the international community to stand by them have not been answered," said Barr.
In an address to the UN Human Rights Council back in June, Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, warned of the severe social implications of a lack of justice for human rights violations committed by the Taliban. "Failure to effectively tackle the cycle of impunity only emboldens the Taliban's oppressive regime and reduces the possibility of genuine & durable peace in Afghanistan and beyond," he said. Bennet has also supported calls for the UN to recognize gender apartheid in Afghanistan as a crime under international law.
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