Since the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban came to power last year in Afghanistan, they’ve imposed one enslaving measure after another against women—banning them from schools after sixth grade and all university and higher education, from traveling without a male relative, from working with nongovernmental organizations (a major source of jobs and income which impacts 11.6 million women in Afghanistan) and more.
Eighty percent of school-aged Afghan young women and girls—some 2.5 million people—are forced to remain out of school. Afghan women are more and more imprisoned in their homes—where 95 percent of violence against women takes place—and legal protections for those fleeing domestic violence have largely vanished.
A new UN report on Afghanistan condemns these abuses and other abuses against women, including the arbitrary arrest of women protesters and even banning them from using public parks. It found the Taliban has “normalized” systemic violence and human rights abuses against women and girls, actions which may constitute a crime against humanity.
On March 6, a courageous group of young women protested the Taliban’s ban on female education by sitting on the ground outside Kabul University reading their books in defiance. Such an act takes enormous bravery as the Taliban are torturing, arresting, beating, kidnapping, even killing women who protest on the streets.
Afghan journalist Zahra Nader told Democracy Now!:
Those women that protested yesterday in Kabul, they know what they’re facing. They know that when they go to streets and ask for their rights.…They might be killed on the streets, and nothing’s going to be changed, but they are still willing to take that risk…. This is a fight for them to resist for their rights and what they want. Even if that comes at the cost of their own lives, they are willing to take that.1
