UN claims Taliban eradicating Afghan women from public life

UNITED NATIONS (NA): Taliban commanders in Afghanistan are institutionalising widespread and systematic violence against women and children, according to a UN study issued this week. Special Procedures, the UN system’s largest human rights watchdog, issued the findings on Monday.

As per a tweet on the group’s official site, it was stated that Taliban commanders were “attempting to eliminate women and girls from public life via systematic gender-based discrimination and brutality,” UN emphasized that global humanitarian assistance must also “respond to women’s needs”.

Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, experts have repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying that the situation requires rapid response. According to experts, these rules show a collective punishment of women and girls, entrenched in gender-based prejudice and harmful behaviours.

As a group, the UN highlighted its worries about the ongoing and systematic efforts in Afghanistan to keep women out of the social, economic, and political arenas in the nation.

Women from ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Hazara, Tajik and Hindu populations, are particularly at risk in Afghanistan, according to the experts who spoke out on the issue. Forced marriages and child trafficking, as well as sexual exploitation and forced labour, are all forms of exploitation that women and girls are in danger of.

Taliban barred women from returning to work, imposed conditions such as that they had to have a male relative accompany them in public settings, women got prohibited from taking public transportation alone, as well as subjected to a rigorous clothing code, according to a study by the National Women’s Law Centre.

These restrictions have hampered women’s capacity to work and earn a livelihood, which has also pushed them further into poverty, experts say.

Humanitarian crises have exacerbated the hardships of women who are the primary breadwinners in their families. According to the experts, the denial of secondary and tertiary education for women and girls is “of special and severe concern.” Women get stigmatised by these rules, and as a result, it prevented the great majority of females in grades 7 through 12 from attending school for no other reason than their gender.

“We are seeing an attempt to remove women and girls from public life in Afghanistan, including those institutions and procedures that had helped and protected them,” the experts stated in their report. An expert panel on human rights in Afghanistan has complained about the impact on “women and girls who are most in danger” of the decision to shut down the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the physical takeover of the commission’s offices.

Several life-saving services for survivors of gender-based violence have been shut down because of the threat of reprisal, according to the professionals working in Afghanistan.

This presents a concerning image of women’s situation in Afghanistan.