By Rukhshana Media
The Taliban are erasing women and girls from public life in Afghanistan, a group of UN human rights experts warned on Monday.
“Taliban leaders in Afghanistan are institutionalizing large scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls,” the group said in a statement.
Since the Taliban took over in August, the group has banned women’s rights to work and education beyond secondary school. The Taliban also issued decrees restricting certain behaviors and movements based on their understanding of Islamic Sharia. These decrees mainly target women’s social conduct and clothing.
The UN experts said the Taliban’s “policies constitute a collective punishment of women and girls, grounded on gender-based bias and harmful practices.”
“These exclusionary and discriminatory policies are being enforced through a wave of measures such as barring women from returning to their jobs, requiring a male relative to accompany them in public spaces, prohibiting women from using public transport on their own, as well as imposing a strict dress code on women and girls,” the expert said.
The experts stated that the Taliban have restricted “freedom of movement, expression and association, and their participation in public and political affairs, these policies have also affected the ability of women to work and to make a living, pushing them further into poverty.”
The warning came as women organized protests for a third consecutive day, calling for justice for women killed or disappeared by the Taliban.
On Monday, women in Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, gathered in an indoor space, calling attention to the disappearance of Alia Azizi, the director of the women’s prison in the western city of Herat, and Zainab Abdullahi, who was killed at a Taliban checkpoint in Kabul.
