October 01, 2024

Afghan women call for support Amid crippling restrictions

topic:	Women's rights
located:	Afghanistan
editor:	Manija Mirzaie

In the wake of the Taliban’s restriction on women’s voices in Afghanistan, several defiant Afghan women and girls have taken to social media to sing and chant, receiving praise from a wider audience. However, praise alone falls short of the tangible support they need.

First, women were sacked from public and private jobs and then denied their right to education and free movement in public places. Afghan women are being vehemently pushed back into darker corners in the war-ravaged country under Taliban rule.

The Taliban’s justice ministry announced that the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” law, its moral policing unit, has been ratified into effect and published in the official gazette. The law includes a preamble, four chapters and 35 articles. According to this law, women must cover their entire bodies, including their faces, to prevent sedition (rebellion) in society, and women’s voices are considered “awrah” (intimate or private parts), to be regulated under this harsh law.

This means any of the morality police can arrest and punish any Afghan woman on the spot simply for speaking in public on a charge of sedition.

In defiance of this, one among many resilient Afghan girls sang these lines in a video posted online: “The flower will unfurl, revealing a spring of freedom, I sing the anthem of freedom, again, freedom.” Many such social media videos have shown Afghan women singing and speaking in defiance.

This artistic demonstration of resistance has been praised, and rights groups have also issued strong statements to condemn the Taliban’s spate of violent crippling restrictions on Afghan women.

In Afghanistan, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Roza Otunbayeva, has said this move extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls as now even the sound of a female voice outside the home is deemed a moral violation.

There is a greater need for more practical measures for coming to the rescue of Afghan women. Experts with sound knowledge and understanding of Afghanistan have been pushing for alternative education and job opportunities for Afghan women and girls to create a breathing space for them as the international diplomatic push against the Taliban lingers on.

As the UN Human Rights Council continues to discuss Afghanistan, there is a possibility to create a new accountability mechanism with documented proof of rights violations and recommendations based on consultation with Afghan women.

As Human Rights Watch has proposed, the UN, as well as the broader international community, can take a step further than just praising the bravery of Afghan women through such a mechanism.

Image by Pixabay.

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