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Regressing from its previous strides towards gender equality as the first Muslim country to sign (August 14, 1980) and ratify (March 05, 2003) the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Afghanistan’s AMU TV on August 22, 2024, announced the Supreme Leader’s fiat that women must henceforth wear the black veil with nothing visible, not even their hands. Under the Taliban regime, Afghan women have been facing the most brutal discrimination due to gender apartheid.
Canadian entrepreneur, Sara Wahedi, founder of the digital app, Ehtesab, which provides real-time emergency information to Kabul residents, explained that the diktat means that women must cover their face fully; the garment must be thick and loose; women must not wear attractive clothing, tight clothes, or clothes that reveal the shape of their body; women must not reveal their hair or wear see-through clothes; women must not wear short clothes; women must not apply perfume or cosmetics, and Muslim women must avoid imitating the dress styles of non-Muslim women.
The trouble began almost immediately after the Taliban seized power on August 15, 2021, after American troops made a chaotic departure from Kabul. In December 2022, the CEDAW condemned the Taliban regime’s decision to exclude women and girls from universities and ban them from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and warned that these measures would create one of the world’s largest gender gaps that would impact the nation for generations.
CEDAW declared, “Since returning to power, the de facto authorities have shut down secondary schools for girls across the country, and it is estimated that more than one million girls have been barred from attending high school over the past year. With the latest ban on universities, the country is now excluding half of its population from normal schooling, creating one of the world’s biggest gender gaps.” The denial of educational opportunities begins at the tender age of six years, which in turn gives rise to fears of increased domestic violence and increased marriages of minor girls.
The ban on women working in NGOs, CEDAW observed, would not only deprive them and their families of income but would erase their only social life and deny them an opportunity to contribute to the country’s development. Moreover, millions of women and girls could be left without access to humanitarian aid, which could put as many as six million people at risk of famine. It urged that these decisions be reversed and women and girls of all ages permitted to return to their classrooms and workplaces safely.
The exclusion of girls and women from secondary schools and universities amounts to a direct violation of the country’s binding legal obligations to uphold the fundamental human rights and freedoms guaranteed in customary international law and human rights treaties to which it is a party, including the CEDAW.
The right to education and the right to participate freely and safely in the development of Afghan society are interlinked. The Committee further urged the authorities to protect the rights of women and girls to peaceful assembly and to release those arrested in demonstrations triggered by the decision to ban women from universities. Given the record of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, apprehensions regarding the plight of Afghan women have been justified in light of reports of torture, detention, and abuses.
Shabnam Nasimi, a former policy advisor to the Minister for Afghan Resettlement & Minister for Refugees, lamented, “Women in Afghanistan are being obliterated—no voice, no face, no existence. The Taliban’s latest decrees are nothing short of barbaric: women banned from singing, reciting poetry, or even speaking aloud in public. Their faces and bodies must be hidden from the world. This isn’t just an Afghanistan tragedy; it is a stain on the global conscience, brought about by our failure to act.”
Afghanistan is currently experiencing the world’s worst women’s rights crisis. It is severe enough for the international community to consider classifying gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. Activists insist that international engagements with the Taliban regime cannot overlook Kabul’s trampling over the rights and dignity of its entire female citizenry.
The February 2024 report by the UN special rapporteur has underlined the dire human rights situation in Afghanistan. To mitigate the situation, the activists urge the CEDAW committee to press for re-establishing Afghanistan’s CEDAW steering committee, technical committee, and drafting committee within the country and among Afghan communities in exile.
Amnesty International asserts that gender apartheid must be recognized as a crime under international law to strengthen efforts to combat institutionalized regimes of systematic oppression and domination on the grounds of gender. Agnès Callamard, secretary general, said, “We are calling for the recognition of gender apartheid under international law to fill a major gap in our global legal framework. No one should ever be permitted to violate, segregate, silence or exclude people because of their gender.”
Amnesty International noted the restrictions placed on girls and women, to erase them from the public arena. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and Amnesty International have found that the Taliban government’s restrictions on girls and women constitute a crime against humanity. Working women are especially disempowered. All international aid organizations and agencies were ordered not to employ women, as a result of which women’s employment fell by as much as 25 per cent, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). All beauty salons have been shut down, making life drab and joyless.
The situation for ordinary citizens has been aggravated by Western economic sanctions on Afghanistan. Women’s rights activists are hopeful that Russia, China, and other regional powers that engage with the Taliban government could help mitigate the problems faced by the citizens, both in terms of the looming economic crisis and the issue of women’s rights.
However, reality and rhetoric never diverged as blatantly as at Doha (June 30-July 1, 2024) when the United Nations hosted a major international conference on Afghanistan, without the participation of Afghan women. Activists lamented that this gave tacit international legitimacy to the Taliban’s unrecognized and internationally sanctioned government. The conference not only prevented Afghan women from participating in the meeting but removed the issue of women’s rights from the agenda. The Doha 3 meeting crushed the hopes of Afghan women that the UN would hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes, a breach of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, which seeks to ensure women’s full participation in key international discussions.
The meeting’s agenda included economic development, climate change, and drug eradication. The Taliban reportedly refused to discuss their alleged human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture, and denying Afghans, especially women and girls, their fundamental human rights.
Sima Samar, former head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, bemoaned, “When we talk about the critical issues in Afghanistan, it will be meaningless without a discussion on human rights and the right of women to education and work.”
Renowned women’s rights activists denounced the UN for bowing down to the Taliban. Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, expressed shock that the UN had made “very serious concessions” to the Taliban by shutting out Afghan women from the Doha meeting and taking women’s rights off its agenda (X, June 17). She said, “The situation of women in Afghanistan is the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world.”
Unsurprisingly, the outcome of Doha 3 was as hollow as the process itself, which blatantly disregarded the UN Charter which mandates inclusive participation. Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General, spoke of the concerns of Afghan women in her concluding remarks, but a process that began with exclusion stood inherently compromised. Ironically, Article 22 of the Afghanistan Constitution of 2004 states, ‘Any kind of discrimination and privilege between the citizens of Afghanistan are prohibited. The citizens of Afghanistan – whether man or woman – have equal rights and duties before the law.’
References
- CEDAW South Asia.
- AMU TV
- Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
- Afghanistan: Banning women and girls from schools and workplace jeopardises entire country, UN committee condemns, OHCHR, 29 December 2022.
- Shabnam Nasimi@NasimiShabnam
- Women’s Rights in Afghanistan and Global Response, New Eastern Outlook, Abbas Hashemite, August 15, 2024.
https://journal-neo.su/2024/08/15/womens-rights-in-afghanistan-and-global-response
- Inside the Taliban’s gender apartheid, Atlantic Council, Parwana Paikan, March 21, 2024
- Global: Gender apartheid must be recognized as a crime under international law, Amnesty International, June 17, 2024.
- ‘A Big Betrayal’: Afghan Women Sound The Alarm Ahead Of Key International Event That Will Include Taliban, RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi and Abubakar Siddique, June 20, 2024.
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-taliban-un-doha-confrence/33001627.html
- UN Meeting Blocks Afghan Women from Agenda, Participation, HRW, Sahar Fetrat,
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/06/24/un-meeting-blocks-afghan-women-agenda-participation
- Hollow outcomes from a flawed process: Reflecting on the third Doha talks, Reliefweb, July 2, 2024.
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