NWC stands in solidarity with women in Afghanistan

Published: Thursday, September 05, 2024

The National Women’s Council expresses our strong solidarity with women and girls in Afghanistan just over three years after the takeover by the Taliban.

Since 2021, there have been extreme regressions and reversions of civil and democratic rights and freedoms in Afghanistan. NWC roundly condemns these moves which include the banning of girls from secondary and third level school, forcing women to cover their faces in public, and a prohibition on women traveling without male accompaniment. Music has been banned and corporal punishments such as flogging and amputations have returned. Mass executions and “disappearances” have also been reported.

Recently, the Taliban decreed a ban on women’s voices in public. The decree stipulates that women must not sing or read aloud in public, and they must not allow their voices “carry” beyond the walls of their homes. Women are forbidden from even looking at any man to whom they are not related.

NWC condemns these restrictions which aim at, and will succeed in, erasing women from public life. UN Women has said that 64% of women in Afghanistan do not feel safe leaving their homes alone.

We stand in solidarity with Afghan women living in Ireland who are keeping the experience of Afghan women on the political agenda. Further, NWC underlines the comments of UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, who has used the term “gender apartheid” to describe the “institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls” in Afghanistan.

Gender apartheid refers to a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination based on gender, where women are systematically oppressed and excluded from various aspects of public and private life. This term is analogous to racial apartheid, but instead of race, it focuses on the enforced separation and inequality between genders. In the context of Afghanistan, gender apartheid manifests through the above-mentioned policies and practices that severely restrict women's and girls' rights.