Gender Apartheid: Women Under Siege in Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan

Two UN experts have issued a joint statement expressing their alarm about the widespread mental health issues and escalating suicides among women and girls in Afghanistan. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett and Chair Dorothy Estrada-Tanck warned that since the Taliban seized power in 2021, the de facto authorities have issued a cascade of restrictive orders amounting to “extreme institutionalized gender-based discrimination.” They report that the ongoing human rights violations have masked other underlying manifestations of gender-based discrimination that preceded the Taliban’s rule and are now “deeply engrained in society and even normalized.”

The situation for women and girls is appalling, and they face restrictions such as being prohibited from attending school beyond sixth grade, only being provided care by women doctors, and being barred from working at the UN and NGOs. Bennett and Estrada-Tanck shared their preliminary observations, including meetings with Taliban leaders and grave accounts from women and girls they met in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif.

The de facto authorities have dismantled the legal and institutional framework and have been “ruling through the most extreme forms of misogyny.” The Taliban impose certain interpretations of religion that appear not to be shared by the vast majority of Afghans. The experts warn that new Taliban-imposed measures have reportedly contributed to a surge in the rates of child and forced marriage, as well as the proliferation of gender-based violence perpetrated with impunity.

-Re-reported from the story originally published in https://news.un.org/