More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Afghan women’s voices and bodies are deemed ‘intimate’ by the Taliban and banned from public.
While the international community condemns these brutal and oppressive restrictions, it now faces a critical challenge: how to effectively respond to the Taliban’s gender apartheid policies and increasing human rights abuses. The need for the international community to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity grows more urgent.
In a meeting with some special envoys of a few countries for Afghanistan, Afghan women emphasized that Taliban recognition should not be up for debate and that anything about Afghanistan should be consulted with Afghan women.
Over 60 Afghan women representing diverse advocacy groups and coalitions met with the special envoys from Qatar, United Arab Emirates, the US, Indonesia, Norway and a few others from Europe. The meeting of special envoys for Afghanistan is happening today and tomorrow in Doha, Qatar.
In an open letter to the United Nations, Afghan women demand that the organizations stand “firm on their commitment” to not recognizing the Taliban as the official rulers of Afghanistan.
In the latest attack on women, the Taliban has ordered pharmacies in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif to stop selling any form of contraceptives. The Taliban has called family planning and the use of contraception “Western” and “forbidden” in their interpretation of Sharia law.
Since the Taliban takeover, Human Rights Watch has documented 16 attacks against Hazaras, an ethnic minority group native to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. On Sept. 30 a suicide bomber killed 53 people in a predominantly Hazara neighborhood, specifically targeting women and girls in school.
A new Taliban decree requires Afghan women to cover themselves from head to toe, and deputizes men to force women to follow the rule.
At a speaking engagement in Doha, the acting foreign minister of the Taliban, Amir Khan Muttaqi, avoided questions about education for women and girls and reiterated the group needs more time on girls’ education—despite international outcry after last month’s decision that schools above sixth grade would only reopen for boys.
Early this week, the Taliban announced additional members of their Cabinet, and once again, all of them are part of the old guard of the Taliban, despite promises of an inclusive government during peace talks. The 38 new members of the interim government of the Taliban were appointed to military and civilian positions. The leadership team still doesn’t include a single woman.
On Sep. 17, the Taliban issued a statement calling only for boys to return to secondary schools. The statement did not include girls. When the schools reopened the next day, millions of girls across the country did not return to their classes, losing access to their basic rights to education.
At grave risks to their lives, Afghan women have held protests for days to stand against the new all-male Taliban government. The Taliban are responding violently.
