Data shared with Amu from a local source at Herat’s public hospital shows that the facility recorded 38 suicide attempts, two suicides, and one case of a woman being murdered from September 22 to October 22.
According to the data, Herat’s public hospital also documented 73 instances of women being physically assaulted during the same month.
Women and girls in Afghanistan are enduring increasingly difficult conditions under the Taliban’s stringent restrictions.
These figures from a single province in just one month reflect the severe and complex challenges facing women in Afghanistan—challenges borne by hundreds of women like Sabira, who has faced violent mistreatment from her in-laws since her husband’s death.
Amu spoke with a woman named Sabira, whose husband passed away four years ago. She described enduring months of violent treatment from her in-laws.
“With the Taliban’s return to power and their harsh restrictions on women and girls, and the recent enforcement of morality law, there has been a surge of concern about violations of women’s and girls’ rights in Afghanistan,” she said.
A recent joint study by UN Women and the International Organization for Migration found that since the Taliban regained control, some Afghan women have been subjected to “house arrest,” and the perception of women as “second-class citizens” is growing.
“An international coalition should first be formed to monitor human rights violations by the Taliban, and then Taliban leaders should be referred to international courts for these abuses,” said Sima Noori, a human rights activist, said.
While the Taliban consistently claim that the rights of women and girls are protected in the country, human rights activists argue that, given the enforcement of the morality law, the human rights crisis and violations against women and girls are “evident to all.”
