The Taliban’s new law erases women, justifying violence against them

The Taliban’s war on women’s rights is intensifying

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing repressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, particularly those of women and girls.

But the recently passed “Utility and Virtue” law goes even further. It is one of the most repressive and discriminatory measures implemented by Islamist radical groups.

As a human rights activist in Afghanistan, and as a scholar working in Afghanistan since 2002, we have been documenting Taliban attacks against women for decades.

The new law seeks to completely silence women in public. They are forbidden to speak, sing or pray aloud. The law attempts to literally erase them, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.

This order suppressed most of women’s political, civil and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to suppress them.

Back to power

The Taliban’s war on women’s rights is intensifying

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing repressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, particularly those of women and girls.

But the recently passed “Utility and Virtue” law goes even further. It is one of the most repressive and discriminatory measures implemented by Islamist radical groups.

As a human rights activist in Afghanistan, and as a scholar working in Afghanistan since 2002, we have been documenting Taliban attacks against women for decades.

The new law seeks to completely silence women in public. They are forbidden to speak, sing or pray aloud. The law attempts to literally erase them, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.

This order suppressed most of women’s political, civil and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to suppress them.

Back to power

Generations of women who grew up in Afghanistan over the past 20 years and now live in Afghanistan and abroad have responded to the benevolence and virtue laws with disbelief and horror.

After 2001, when the Taliban were ousted from power, millions of Afghan women and girls went to school. They became professionals – lawyers, artists, athletes, engineers and human rights leaders. They voted in large numbers and served in all spheres of government.

But the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, waging a violent war against the United States and Afghanistan’s NATO-backed government. And they aggressively rolled back two decades of progress on women’s rights.

Since then, the Taliban has issued more than 100 orders and directives that violate the rights of women and girls under international law and Afghan national law.

They contain more than 20 restricted instructions. Among other things, they ban women and girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, denying 1.5 million girls and young women access to education. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to ban girls from both secondary schools and universities.

The mandate also bars women and girls from working for the United Nations and other NGOs. This has made it extraordinarily difficult for humanitarian aid agencies to reach Afghan women and children, who are particularly in need of public health assistance.

Also, the radical group forbids women and girls from traveling, going to parks or in public without a male relative. And it prevents women and girls from coming together to protest this treatment.

Taliban punishments include torture and rape

To enforce these violations, the Taliban disbanded the Ministry of Women’s Affairs a few weeks after taking power and replaced it with the Harmony and Sub-Ministry, whose morality police violently enforce the measures.

Those who oppose the law are subject to beatings, imprisonment, torture, rape and execution. The women protestors reported that they were beaten and tortured with electric shocks. The Taliban allegedly raped girls and women in prisons, including a film of a gang-rape of an Afghan female activist jailed for protesting.

Women have no means of seeking justice. The Taliban has abolished Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission. The Commission has investigated and reported on alleged extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, illegal detention and inhumane treatment and violations of women’s rights.

The Taliban have also removed other mechanisms to protect women, including closing all women’s shelters and domestic violence centers.

‘Duty bound to hide his voice’

New vice and immorality laws further infringed on women’s rights.

For example, Article 13 mandates that a woman “is obliged to conceal her voice, face and body” if she leaves her home.

It orders the complete suppression of women’s voices. They should not speak, sing, laugh, cry, pray or read the Quran in public. The measure directs enforcers to stop “the voice of women or music from any assembly or house.”

The measure also defines the hijab, the head covering worn by some Muslim women in public, in perhaps the most restrictive terms. Now not just covering the head, the hijab has been extended to cover the entire body and cover the face. Women are also forbidden to make eye contact with men.

This is against Afghan tradition. Traditional Afghan dress for women is brilliantly colorful, elaborately decorated, with long sleeves, full skirts and bottom pants.

Broad restrictions

Measures of vice and virtue also target the general population.

It censors people’s access to media and mandates penalties for broadcasting music, videos, photographs or films of humans or animals. Article 22 prohibits Afghan men and women from befriending non-Muslims or assisting them in any way.

The law gives extreme powers to religious overseers, known as “enforcers”.

Enforcers can act based on observation and hearsay, or the testimony of two people.

And there is a list of penalties that enforcers can apply. These include threats, verbal punishment and confiscation and destruction of property.

Repeated violations by individuals or groups may lead to court cases. Based on the Taliban’s misinterpretation of Sharia criminal law, the Upar and Virtue Laws allow for lengthy imprisonment, stoning, flogging, execution and throwing from mountains.

Shortly after the measure was implemented, for example, two women who went to the city market were severely assaulted by enforcers.

The Vice and Virtue mandates have dashed many Afghans’ hopes for real change in the Taliban’s repressive policies. And it casts serious doubt on how successful the international community has been in its efforts to improve the status of Afghan women.

At recent high-level talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, UN and US officials rejected Taliban demands to exclude Afghan women entirely from the talks. A few weeks later, the Taliban, seemingly emboldened, announced their new virtues and by-laws.

These human rights violations are contrary to religion and culture in Afghanistan, where women have a long history of fighting for their rights.

Today, there is hardly any other country in the world that violates the human rights of women and girls to the same extent as the Taliban. But this is not just a problem for women and girls in Afghanistan. Protection of human rights and human dignity is the responsibility of each of us.