Afghanistan Peace CampaignNo school. No work. No speaking outside. No healthcare without an increasingly scarce female provider. No dissent. No justice.
This is the horrific reality for women and girls in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan four years ago. The Taliban’s assaults are making life increasingly unbearable. Since August 15, 2021, over 100 edicts have targeted women and girls’ fundamental rights, freedoms, and legal protections.
The Law for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice represents the most extreme form of gender-based oppression in modern history. Afghan women’s rights activists have described these laws and edicts as a form of imprisonment for women, driving an “epidemic of suicidal thoughts.” The situation is so dire that it meets the criteria of “gender apartheid.”
Sadly, the international community has turned its attention away from the systematic oppression of women in Afghanistan by failing to uphold its commitments, protect at-risk Afghans, and meet dire humanitarian needs. Confronted with the Taliban’s gender apartheid, many of the very same countries that for decades were stalwart defenders of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and supported their progress are disturbingly quiet. Instead of tying diplomatic engagement to measurable human rights benchmarks and enforceable consequences for violations, some countries have begun to treat the Taliban’s actions as normal and have quietly reopened embassies and consulates inside the country.As the need for international support increases, the international community is failing to step up. When it does provide funds, it is unpredictable and reactive. The global reduction in funding for humanitarian assistance is having devastating impacts on the 23.7 million Afghans in need.
The World Food Program reported recently that one in three Afghan children is stunted due to acute food insecurity. States should continue to provide funds for life-saving humanitarian assistance — including food and healthcare — and fund vital programs that support the rights of Afghan women and girls. In humanitarian settings, early marriage of girls is a common response to crises.
In Afghanistan, families facing acute economic hardship have sometimes married off or even sold their daughters to cope. One woman told us, “Families want their daughters to marry soon and in exchange for money … so they can meet the expenses of the rest of the family.”
The U.S. has a particular duty to the women of Afghanistan. During the 20-year war, the U.S. made a strong commitment to improving the well-being of women and girls. That commitment has now been abdicated, and the disastrous deal with the Taliban and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now, the U.S. has also ended its Temporary Protective Status for Afghans in the country, eliminating a critical pathway for legal status in the U.S. This will de facto force many Afghans who stood with the U.S. and risked their lives fighting for the values we hold dear to leave the U.S., putting them in grave danger and exposing them to severe punishment.
These decisions and impending deportations place Afghans — many of whom are at risk because of their work to advance human rights or support the international coalition — in grave danger and expose them to severe punishment. Afghan women and girls are being abandoned to the most horrific fate.
The hard-won progress of the last 20 years has been lost. The Taliban would like us to think that these losses are irreversible, but many Afghan women and girls don’t believe this is true — they still have hope and continue working for a better future.
Despite reporting negative consequences from their work to strengthen peace and security — including community exclusion, mental health impacts, and loss of economic opportunity — women reported a continued commitment to this work and shared a range of priorities, including legal support, capacity building and the need for funding. The majority of women respondents also felt that their work to advance peace and security provided them with positive community impact personally. They are not giving up, despite the odds.
There are clear measures that the international community can and must take to improve conditions for women and girls. States must resist the normalization of the Taliban’s repressive regime. International actors must use a rights-based approach in all its engagements with the Taliban, while also restoring and increasing humanitarian assistance and reinstating and expanding resettlement pathways for at-risk Afghans.
For instance, the U.N.-led Doha Process should integrate Afghan women’s representation at all levels since their exclusion in past negotiations emboldened the Taliban’s regressive policies and undermined the international community’s leverage. And the international community must be firm, clear, and constantly communicating that the Taliban’s worsening attack on women and girls will not be tolerated.
The Taliban would like states to quietly retreat from the fight for a peaceful, equitable, and inclusive Afghanistan. Afghan women and girls refuse to accept that Afghanistan is a “lost cause.” The international community should rally behind them.