Failing Afghanistan’s female population

A

fghan women are holding conferences and singing, but they are doing so outside of their home country and online. In Afghanistan itself, women and girls now not only cannot have an education, they have also been banned from having their voices heard in public.

Apparently, too, Afghan’s female population have to be covered head to toe when they venture outside, including their entire faces.

These – and more – are according to a new law issued last Aug. 21 by Afghanistan’s Ministry for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, which has its own religious police to enforce its edicts.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), has criticized the law as a “distressing vision” for the country’s future. She noted that these new regulations further tighten what are already oppressive restrictions on the rights of women and girls, with even “the sound of a female voice” in public seemingly seen as a moral transgression.

But Afghan rights advocate Nilofer Ayoubi, who is currently based in Poland, says that the U.N. and the rest of the international community are to blame for the worsening conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan. 

Referring to the latest law, she says, “This is a very clear, stark example of the failure of the U.N. and … the implications of the third Doha meeting. You can see it clearly.”  

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers were not invited to the first meeting hosted by the U.N. in May last year in Qatar to discuss the country’s problems with special envoys. The Taliban refused to attend the second meeting, also in Doha, last February. But it sent representatives to the third meeting that was held in late June after the U.N. acceded to its conditions. 

These included recognizing the Taliban as Afghanistan’s sole representative at the meeting, which resulted in the removal of women’s issues and the formation of an inclusive government from the agenda. Women and civil activists were also excluded from the conference.

A worsening humanitarian crisis

Some observers say that considering the worsening conditions for the entire population of Afghanistan, it was only correct for the U.N. to start trying to include the Taliban in the Doha series of meetings on Afghanistan, even if this means accepting the group’s conditions. 

The International Organization on Migration (IOM) has described Afghanistan as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. It says that in 2024, an estimated 23.7 million of the country’s people – more than half of Afghanistan’s population – are projected to require humanitarian assistance.

Donors face critical decisions in response to U.N. appeals for billions in aid for the Afghan people. And with the Taliban regime appearing to be a permanent fixture in Afghanistan, Western and regional governments must also navigate difficult choices about whether and how to normalize relations with the regime.

Graeme Smith, a senior analyst on Afghanistan at the global non-profit International Crisis Group, predicts that the Taliban will continue to clash with international actors over women’s rights and political freedoms for the foreseeable future. 

But he also emphasizes the urgency of addressing the immediate needs of starving Afghans and the severe crisis in Afghanistan’s healthcare sector.

“There’s an urgent need for practical results from Doha 3 and other tracks of engagement with the regime,” Smith says, “even if the gender edicts continue to make the Taliban more and more politically estranged from the rest of the world.” 

He highlights the devastating consequences of international isolation on Afghan women and girls, emphasizing that global pressure tactics have failed to produce meaningful change.

These include, among others, blocking the Taliban from representing Afghanistan at the United Nations and other major institutions; freezing billions of dollars in Afghan state assets; and cutting off almost every single development project in the country – the combination of which hobbled the banking sector and left billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure unfinished.

“(Each) represents a serious effort by international actors to pressure the Taliban. The pressure, however, has not worked.” Smith says. 

But David Sproule, Special Representative of Canada for Afghanistan, challenges that view. In an interview with Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC) via a Zoom call, he points out: “Have the Taliban been accepted as part of any international organization as a member? No. Have the Taliban been accepted to the U.N.? No. Yes, some of their appointees have been accepted at certain embassies, particularly in the region. But in none of those countries has the Taliban been officially recognized in the form of credential ceremony, with the possible exception of China. It’s clear to me that they’re very frustrated.”

“The Taliban,” Sproule says, “didn’t expect the unity of international opposition. And particularly that opposition is very strong insofar as the rights of women and girls, and specifically the rights to an education.”

He also expresses Canada’s objection to civil society’s exclusion at the third Doha meeting, telling ADC, “Given the issues being discussed, one of overriding importance to the international community – and integral to the role of the special coordinator for Afghanistan, established by the UN Security Council – is for the Taliban to address human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. We saw it as a significant oversight that there wasn’t a specific agenda item dedicated to this issue.”

Slaps and songs

Ayoubi herself believes that refusing to yield to the Taliban’s demand to be Afghanistan’s exclusive representative at the most recent Doha meeting would have been a better U.N. move. 

“You know, this would have given the Taliban a clear message that the U.N. is standing firm with the women and people of Afghanistan. But instead, they chose to signal to the Taliban that they are the ones leading, not us,” she said.

She notes that the Taliban has even recently barred U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett from traveling to Afghanistan for “spreading propaganda.” 

Since May 2022, Bennett has visited Afghanistan multiple times and has been vocal about the Taliban’s human rights violations, particularly concerning the rights of girls and women.  

Says Ayoubi of the Taliban’s ban on Bennett: “It was a clear slap in the face to the U.N. – the same body that gives the Taliban the power to decide whether Afghan women are included in discussions or not.”

In contrast to the relative ease in which the Taliban secured a seat at Doha, it took Afghan women rights advocates two years before they could even find a country to host their conference. Albania eventually agreed to do so; this September, in Albania a few weeks after the Taliban’s latest restrictions on women, more than 130 Afghan women traveled to Tirana to attend a summit dedicated to their concerns. 

In a report dated Sept. 11, the U.K. publication The Guardian quoted former Afghan MP Fawzi Koofi as saying that the summit was aimed at achieving consensus and strategizing “how to make the Taliban accountable for the human rights violations they are perpetrating and how to improve the economic situation for women inside the country.”

The report also said that the event’s organizers hoped that the meeting would lead to “a set of demands or guidelines for the international community that sets out how Afghan women want to respond to the systematic rights and freedoms by the Taliban.”

Elsewhere, Afghan women have been posting videos of themselves singing, in protest against the Taliban’s latest edict. But the Taliban continues to insist that its laws are in line with Islamic principles, and resists external criticism of these on the grounds of religious and cultural sovereignty.

Mostly talk, little action

During the two decades of U.S.-NATO involvement in Afghanistan, foreign officials made the key decisions about the country’s future. Now, activists say, international influence on the country has waned significantly.  While this may have been welcomed in most circumstances, in Afghanistan this has meant having the Taliban operating with fewer constraints and less fear of consequences while it tramples on people’s rights and freedoms, especially those of women. 

“This is all on the (European Union) and the U.N.,” says Ayoubi. “If they hadn’t provided financial support or sent delegations that make the Taliban feel superior, the situation might be different.”

“They essentially say, ‘If you just let us visit Afghanistan, we’ll send you millions’,” she continues. “And when we talk about the humanitarian crisis, what has changed in these three years? The number of people starving is growing daily. We’re talking about 30 million people, with more than half – over 18 million – confined within their homes.”

Fellow Afghan rights advocate Samira Hamidi is similarly frustrated over what she considers the lack of effective mechanisms in the international community for providing humanitarian support in the country.

“What sort of humanitarian crisis have they addressed?” she says of foreign governments and international aid agencies. “They have made Afghan people beggars…. Let’s say they are focusing on humanitarian support. How much are they prioritizing support (for) women and girls? Where is that kind of information available? Even if we assume that they are doing this for the sake of humanitarian (concerns), why have they failed to establish a proper humanitarian support mechanism in Afghanistan in the last three years?”

Hamidi points out that the international community has mostly responded to the Taliban with statements and condemnations – and little real action. For example, she says that 1.4 million girls being denied education for the past three years is “a clear issue,” arguing that “it’s not about religion or culture, just basic rights that every child should have.”

“Yet, this hasn’t been properly addressed,” she says. “The problem is that everything has become so politicized. The focus keeps shifting from one conflict to another – Afghanistan to Ukraine, Ukraine to Ethiopia, and now Gaza – leaving crucial issues like girls’ education in Afghanistan neglected.”

Hamidi, however, does not believe that “the Taliban have lost their leverage or that the international community has no power over them.”

“The Taliban are still very much in need of financial support, international recognition, and access to U.N. positions in Geneva and New York,” she says. “They also want to have travel restrictions lifted so they can represent themselves globally. The real problem is that, over the past three years, the international community has mostly just made symbolic gestures instead of taking meaningful action.”

“It’s very difficult to envision what the future holds,” Hamidi says, given all these. “However, one thing that is clear is that, over the past three years, the only group that has not given up is the women’s groups – both those inside Afghanistan and those outside. It takes immense effort and courage to continue this fight.” ◉