Five years after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, circumstances have become “devastating” — not just for women and girls, but for the entire country, according to a new report from UN Women on the state of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
As half the population is effectively barred from participating in routine activities that comprise a life — going to school, finding meaningful work, accessing healthcare, and leaving home without a male guardian — the whole country is affected by the loss, driving down the economy and morale, UN Women researchers found.
“No other country in modern times has dismantled the rights of half its population through law, policy and practice to the same extent,” the report’s authors wrote. “At the same time, overlapping humanitarian and economic crises and deepening poverty are also having a disproportionate impact on women and girls.”
Since the Taliban takeover, authorities have issued more than 100 decrees severely restricting women’s rights. According to a UN survey of 5,000 Afghans in rural and urban communities in the past year, nearly 40% of women reported feeling more pressure from within their own communities, and changed their behavior so as not to be reported by relatives or neighbors for inappropriate dress, speech, movements or actions.
Starting around 13, girls are barred from attending school, and women cannot pursue jobs or higher education, nor can they make basic decisions without male approval. Women’s access to medical care is extremely limited, resulting in less healthy lifestyles and shorter lifespans, according to the report. A mental health crisis is likely flying under the radar.
Belquis Ahmadi, a human rights lawyer who worked at the United States Institute of Peace, wrote in a separate analysis about Taliban rule — which hasn’t imposed these conditions since it controlled the country in the late 90s — that every girl and woman faces serious long-term consequences.
“Behind every Taliban decree is a human story: A university student packing away her books, a teacher dismissed from the profession she loves, a judge forced into hiding, a doctor prevented from treating patients, an entrepreneur closing her business, or a young girl asking her parents why she is no longer allowed to learn while her brother walks freely to school,” she wrote, according to the New York Times.
One of the worst outcomes of this dire situation, though, is that it has all become normalized, Ahmadi argued.
“The greatest danger facing Afghanistan today is not only that 20 million women and girls are being systematically erased from public life,” she wrote. “It is that the world is slowly learning to live with it.”
