By Azada Taran
A move by the Taliban to remove women’s images from national identity cards on request has sparked protests from human rights defenders, who say it is the latest attempt to erase women from public life in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the Taliban-controlled National Statistics and Information Authority said the group’s supreme leader had personally taken the decision to allow the removal of women’s photos from the cards on the advice of the Dar al-Ifta, or religious council.
The Taliban have said women will be able to choose whether to have their images on the card. But many women’s rights defenders worry that the choice could be taken out of their hands given the gender imbalance in Afghan society, which the Taliban has gone to some lengths to reinforce since they retook power four years ago.
A social media campaign to protest the move has launched under the slogan, “My Photo, My Identity”, with critics accusing the Taliban of seeking to deprive women of their citizenship rights.
“When the Taliban strip women of this right, in fact, they aim to exclude women from social participation, access to services, even property rights and the right to travel,” women’s rights activist Zahra Mousawi told Rukhshana Media.
“These policies are deliberately designed to restrict women further and erase them from the public sphere.”
Mousawi said Afghan women had fought for years to have their identity recognised, and urged human rights institutions to put pressure on the Taliban to restore this and other rights.
Another activist, Hamia Naderi, expressed fears that the removal of their photos would reinforce an impression of women as being dependent on male family members, rather than autonomous adults.
Already, Afghan women have to be accompanied by a male relative to leave their homes under new laws brought in since the Taliban took back power in 2021. Women and girls are barred from secondary and further education, and cannot work outside the home except in a very small number of jobs. Even their dress is closely policed.
Naderi said the latest move could facilitate identity fraud, human trafficking, and even forced marriages. “Removing women’s photos from ID cards is one of the clearest forms of the Taliban’s gender apartheid. It systematically deprives women of independent citizenship and renders them faceless and invisible,” she said.
“With the removal of women’s identity, they are no longer seen as individuals but only as dependents of male family members.”
Mohammad Halim Rafi, spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled National Statistics and Information Authority, said worries that male relatives could exploit the new rule were “not our concern,” adding, “that is why it was made optional”.
Under the new rules, including women’s photos in ID cards was deemed “permissible in cases of extreme necessity, and optional, ” he said.
National identity cards are crucial for many aspects of daily life in Afghanistan, but women have long been deprived of them. Even before the Taliban’s return, more than 50% had no card, compared with only 6% of men, with implications for everything from voting to opening a bank account – key to achieving financial independence.
Legal expert Hasan Payam said erasing women’s photos from identity cards would “create a gender gap that amounts to gender discrimination” by placing even more control over women’s lives into the hands of men.
The move follows a statement by U.N. Women last month that condemned the increasing curtailment of Afghan women’s rights and said that with each new restriction imposed on them, Afghan women were “being pushed further out of public life – and closer to being erased from it altogether”.
“This time we are being erased not from streets and alleys, but from our own ID cards,” wrote Rana Shojai, one of many who took to social media to voice their outrage.
“The women who are mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives in this land now mean nothing to the Taliban—not even worth a single photo. This is not just removing a picture; it is another step toward the systematic erasure of women from public life”
