Rukhshana media: Afghan women have been deprived of their identity in all personal and social dimensions for two and half years and have suffered enormous and irreparable costs. Considering this situation, for you as a human rights activist, especially women’s rights, what does March 8 in Afghanistan evoke?
Heather Barr: March 8 in Afghanistan this year cannot be anything but a day of mourning.
It’s a day when women and girls mourn the rights that have been ripped away from them by the Taliban in the last two and a half or more years, and the rights they continue to see stripped away every day under Taliban rule.
It’s also a day when many Afghan women and girls will, I’m sure, be having feelings of betrayal about the way that they’ve been treated and are being treated by the international community.
March 8 this year comes just weeks after the Doha special envoy’s meeting — a meeting convened by the UN where Afghan women were, yet again, almost entirely shut out. This is in clear violation of Security Council resolution 1325 which says that women must be full participants in such discussions. The explicit agenda of that meeting was to discuss a path toward normalizing relations with the Taliban. So the feeling of betrayal is very intense at the moment.
One of the many devastating pieces of news coming from Afghanistan these days are reports of growing rates of suicide among women and girls. That should shame all of us this March 8.
Rukhshana media:The main philosophy of March 8 is equality of women and men. From this perspective, what can be shown as what the Taliban brought to women in Afghanistan?
Heather Barr: It’s important to note that the number of countries globally that have achieved gender equality is zero. Even countries celebrated as being among the most equal, such as some of the Nordic countries, still have serious problems with issues like the gender pay gap and responses to violence against women. So women everywhere in the world are still in a struggle to have their governments fully recognize and uphold their rights.
And it’s even worse than that. We are also in middle of a global backlash against the rights of women and girls. We see that playing out on the national level in too many countries, and we definitely see it playing out in international discussions at the UN and in other international and regional bodies. We are seeing an alarming rise of authoritarian leaders in too many countries, and part of the authoritarian’s tool kit is often attacking women’s rights.
The increasingly apathetic international response to Taliban violations of the rights of women and girls is both a product and a driver of that global backlash. The global backlash against women’s rights lets other countries feel more able to kind of shrug and walk away from the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan, and prioritize other interests instead. In doing so, they contribute to undermining women’s rights globally.
We have to remember that with the Taliban takeover and their abuses, the bar for the worst systematic oppression of women on the planet abruptly became drastically lower. If that isn’t an urgent concern for the international community, it tells us how little women’s rights matter to our leaders. That has grave implications for all women everywhere. We should all be thinking very soberly about that on March 8.
Rukhshana media: In what area do you think Afghan women have experienced the most damage?
Heather Barr: That feels like an impossible question. It’s like saying, which do you like better–your arms, or your legs?
Studying, earning a living, choosing a profession that gives you pride, being able to buy food to feed people you love, living free from violence and from arbitrary detention and torture, having access to life-saving health care, being able to speak freely and participate in public life, being free to walk in the sun and to see your friends — which of those would you prefer to give up?
The answer — for all of us, I think — is that we can’t give up any of these things under any circumstances.
This is why you see Afghan women push back so hard against any suggestion made by diplomats — mostly men, often on the other side of the world — that maybe the Taliban should be rewarded if they could be convinced to make any small concessions in any single area of women’s rights.
None of women’s rights are expendable and all of them are just what the name implies — rights, which are protected under international law and are universal. The Taliban are not exempt from international law, and no one should try to bend international law to make allowances for the Taliban.
Rukhshana media: Why do you think that, contrary to many people’s expectations before 2021, the Taliban have not only broken their promises of respecting women’s rights, but have embarked on more and more violence against girls and women every day?
Heather Barr: I think they have brainwashed themselves. They are convinced that out of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, that they are the only ones who understand Islam. What breath-taking arrogance.
They have spent decades indoctrinating their fighters, and they have made oppression of women and girls the central tenet in their movement’s philosophy and world view.
I think there was a window in the months after the August 15, 2021 takeover when they were feeling their way forward and they might have chosen to keep at least a few of the promises they had made in Doha and elsewhere about respecting women’s rights. But the indoctrination and expectations of their fighters was very strong, and then they started to see that the world would largely accept them anyway.
So they decided to move full steam ahead toward creating their idea of a perfect emirate — one where women and girls are reduced to being the property of male relatives and are prisoners in their homes. In their minds, I think that project is progressing but not complete, and that’s why we see them continuing to crack down more and more. We can’t know just how much more deeply dystopian their end goal might be.
Rukhshana media: The Taliban are openly committing more violence and excluding women in more extreme ways. We are witness to the fact that girls and women are paying the highest price every day. They are being injured and killed, physically and psychologically, they are suffering from grief and isolation, they are being humiliated and insulted. Has the world abandoned Afghan women?
Heather Barr : Yes, I think the world has abandoned Afghan women.
It’s very shameful to remember how, back in 2010 when she was US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton said to Afghan women: “We will not abandon you, we will stand with you always.” That has turned out to be a catastrophic lie.
I’ve talked about how what happens in Afghanistan affects women’s rights everywhere on the planet, but that is not the only reason that many countries should be doing much more to stand with Afghan women. There is a large collection of powerful countries, especially the US, who played a very direct role in helping to create the disaster Afghan women and girls face today. How dare they turn their backs and move on.
Rukhshana media: If the women who first marked March 8 were alive today, what do you think they would say about the current state of women’s rights this March 8 and the situation of women in Afghanistan?
Heather Barr :The history of why we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 cuts across different countries — from 15,000 women workers in New York who marched for decent employment conditions, to women in Russia striking in demand for an end to war, and women in many countries demanding the right to vote.
The UN formally recognized March 8 as International Women’s Day in 1977, and since then it has been observed by governments around the world.
But we should remember the radical roots of this day. It didn’t come from benevolent governments. It came from women whose rights were being violated, who took to the streets, often at great risk to themselves, to demand all of their rights with no compromise. These women would immediately recognize as their sisters the women’s rights protesters in Afghanistan who are risking everything — detention, torture, exile, even their lives — to raise their voices.
Rukhshana media: How amazing is the solitary resistance of Afghan women against the Taliban?
Heather Barr : The protesters are so inspiring!
“Courage calls to courage everywhere” was a slogan from the suffragette movement which demanded votes for women in some pretty bold ways. We need that phrase to be true for how the rest of us respond to Afghan women’s rights protesters right now. Their courage is extraordinary.
It feels like you can tell by the risks these Afghan women are taking that they’ve decided that their lives have become so unlivable that they have nothing left to lose.
Their courage should call to feminists everywhere.
We should hear their demands and use whatever platforms and privilege we have to lift up their voices and confront the people we elected, the people we pay taxes to, the institutions like the United Nations that are supposed to guard the rights of all of us, the countries that say they are committed to a feminist foreign policy. We should say to them: you will not be allowed to ignore the voices of these protesters, and you will not be allowed to forget the cataclysm Afghan women and girls are facing right now, which the international community helped create.
Rukhshana media: The Taliban have more recently started arbitrarily arresting large numbers of girls and women because of what they say is an “improper hijab”. What do your reviews indicate about this? What kind of reports have you received about the widespread mistreatment that detained women are being subjected to?
Heather Barr :Every time we think the Taliban have taken everything from Afghan women and girls, they find more things to take. Women and girls can’t even get used to the rights violations and try to find a predictable way to survive within them because the goal posts keep moving.
This latest crackdown is very alarming. It’s clear that it’s just a pretext to terrorize women and girls and their communities. There is clearly an ethnic dimension too, and that is very troubling.
It has nothing to do with what women and girls are wearing — there is no way to choose a Taliban-proof outfit. It seems like their goal is to scare women, girls, and their families so much that women and girls will stop going outside completely, and live their lives solely within the four walls of their house.
The accounts of abuse from arrested women and girls are also deeply disturbing — and they fit the pattern of abuses we have seen for years now. Human Rights Watch has previously documented women’s rights protesters being arbitrarily detained, denied due process, tortured, and subjected to abusive conditions for release including their families being forced to hand over their property deeds under threat of the property being confiscated if the Taliban accuse the women of engaging in any subsequent infraction.
Rukhshana media: What measures should the international community take against the Taliban in light of this treatment of women?
Heather Barr: It should be crystal clear to everyone by now that efforts to get the Taliban to respect women’s rights by talking with them diplomatically — by “engaging” with them — have been a complete failure. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Afghan women’s rights defenders are looking for other options. Some of those options are through the courts and through international law.
People continue to wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring charges in Afghanistan, which could — and should — include charges against Taliban officials for gender persecution. The ICC has been looking into the situation in Afghanistan since 2006, so that’s an extremely long wait and many activists have lost confidence in the court, but it has a duty to act.
Another strategy relates to the “World Court” — the International Court of Justice in the Hague, in the Netherlands. We all saw how South Africa recently brought a case there against Israel, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. That court can also hear cases brought by one state against another over violations of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). There is a discussion going on now about how a state or states — just one would be enough — could take the Taliban to court for violating CEDAW. That would push back in an important way against normalization of the Taliban’s abuses. That should happen, and it should happen right now.
A third strategy many prominent Afghan women’s rights defenders have signed on to is the effort to make gender apartheid a crime under international law. Iranian women are supporting this effort too, including Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian women’s rights defender who won the Nobel prize this year and accepted it from the prison where she is being held for her activism. There is a unique opportunity to make gender apartheid an international crime right now, by adding it to a draft treaty on crimes against humanity that is being considered by the UN. I think we’ll be hearing a lot about that effort this March 8.
Two other things that are coming up and are important are two reports that will be presented soon to the UN Human Rights Council. This June, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Mr Richard Bennett, will present a report to the council on how the world should respond to “the phenomenon of an institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls.” It will be important to push for strong findings and recommendations in this report, and for full implementation of those recommendations. This process is an important counterbalance — and correction — to the UN Special Coordinator assessment report issued in November 2023 which discussed greater normalization of the Taliban.
The second report will be due in September this year. It’s a report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights which should include “a stocktaking of accountability options and processes for human rights violations and abuses in Afghanistan.” Right now there is pretty much no accountability for human rights violations in Afghanistan. This report should, hopefully, support the demand activists have been making for years for a new UN mechanism with the mandate and resources to collect and preserve evidence of all international crimes happening in Afghanistan, including against women and girls, and provide accountability.
Rukhshana media: Like Afghan women, are you worried that the international community is normalizing its relations with the Taliban? Regardless of the situation of women in Afghanistan?
Heather Barr: Absolutely. I think that’s already happened to a very alarming degree. We see countries in the region that have already almost entirely normalized relations, and countries further away that are increasingly following suit as they fear losing influence. It’s a brutal lesson, I’m afraid, in how other national interests consistently trump women’s rights.
Rukhshana media: Suppose this happens – that relations between countries and the Taliban are normalized – what fate awaits the women of Afghanistan?
Heather Barr: Every step toward normalizing the Taliban — every time they walk a red carpet, or send a new ambassador, or host a meeting with smiling foreigners — sends a message to the Taliban that what they’re doing to women and girls is fine and they are free to carry on.
You can see how emboldened they are. They’re emboldened because they are getting almost everything they want. Foreign governments and the UN are giving them almost everything they want. It’s shameful.
Rukhshana media: If the international community recognizes gender apartheid in Afghanistan, do you think that a positive step will be taken to ensure women’s rights in the world?
Heather Barr : A stronger international response to the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan would be an important signal in defense of women’s rights globally. If a new UN crimes against humanity treaty was adopted that strengthened protections for women and girls, that would send a strong message globally, and would represent a really important push back against the backlash we are seeing against women’s rights around the world.
Rukhshana media: Why do you think, despite the clear evidence, the international community, especially the United Nations, has not yet recognized the issue of gender apartheid under the rule of the Taliban? What is the delay in this regard?
Heather Barr: Most political leaders globally are men. Many powerful countries had a humiliating military defeat in Afghanistan and would like to forget that it ever happened. Other major crises have drawn the world’s attention away — Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, etcetera. So Afghanistan feels very forgotten. But there are some states that are continuing to raise the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan. I want to give a particular shout out to France for their voice in the Security Council and elsewhere in recent months.
Rukhshana media: What is your message to Afghan women, many of whom are going through the darkest era of their lives, this March 8?
Heather Barr :I want to tell Afghan women and girls that I know that they are strong and brave, and we can all see that they will never stop fighting for their rights. The Taliban’s abuses cannot continue indefinitely — they will end, and women and girls will lead the building of a just and equitable society in Afghanistan.
Heather Barr is the associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.
