KABUL— The Taliban’s institutionalized discrimination against Afghan women and girls has reached the level of dehumanization, Amnesty International said in a statement marking International Women’s Day.
According to the rights watchdog, women’s rights have not only been stripped away by law but erased through policies that confine them to the roles of child-bearers and caretakers, isolated within their homes.
The Taliban have banned women and girls from education, employment, and public life, Amnesty said, adding that even their voices and faces in public have been criminalized.
“The Taliban enforce these restrictions with ruthless control, rendering women invisible shadows in their own homes and communities,” wrote Mitra Mehran, an Afghan advocate, in an article published by Amnesty International.
Three years into Taliban rule, an entire generation of Afghan girls has been robbed of its future, and women have been forced back into a struggle for their most basic rights, Mehran wrote.
Mehran stressed the need for stronger international support for Afghan women’s resistance, warning that the Taliban’s persecution of half the country’s population should exceed the threshold for global inaction.
“If the systematic persecution and near public erasure of half a nation’s population does not spark decisive global outrage, then what does that say about our collective commitment to human rights?” she wrote.
Amnesty International has repeatedly urged governments to take stronger measures against the Taliban’s gender-based repression, which human rights organizations have described as gender apartheid.
