‘THE WORST PLACE TO BE WOMEN’
FROM ‘THE SKY TO THE GROUND’ SINCE RETURN OF TALIBAN IN AFGHANISTAN
For months, she spent her life in a library, preparing for Afghanistan’s university entrance exam. She even survived a deadly Islamic State suicide attack on a tutoring centre. But her hope of pursuing university studies was crushed in 2021 when the Taliban returned to power after decades of bloody war.
Like thousands of other women in Afghanistan, Freshta, who is now 20, was denied the chance to take the country’s university entrance exam last year.
“Sadly, I am deprived of my university studies,” said Freshta, who asked to be identified by only one name, due to safety concerns. “It’s a huge loss for me.”
Nearly three years into the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls beyond Grade 6 are banned from attending schools and universities. The hardline supreme leader of the Taliban, based in Kandahar, issued some of the most discriminatory and repressive edicts: Women were banned from working in local and international NGOS and government offices. Women cannot travel without a male guardian. Female beauty salons are shut. Music and TV shows are removed from local TV networks. Female news anchors cover their faces with masks. And the regime’s “vice and virtue” morality police roam the streets, punishing women who don’t wear the hijab.
“Afghanistan is currently the worst place in the world to be women, and the discrimination that they’re experiencing is systemic,” said Lauryn Oates, executive director of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, a non-profit organization delivering online education and library access for thousands of girls across Afghanistan. She said banning girls from education cultivates broader illiteracy among people in the long run.
“There’ll be a very heavy price to be paid. I think women pay the highest price. But, arguably, everyone will ultimately pay a price in the country and beyond. It’s a very bad situation,” she said.
In the past two decades of the international community’s involvement, including Canada, Afghanistan witnessed significant progress in many aspects of life — and women were among the top beneficiaries. The former U.s.-backed government had women ministers in cabinet and women made up nearly 70 members of Afghanistan’s 250-member parliament. Hundreds worked in the media, enjoying freedom of speech.
Before the Taliban conquered the country, youth used to mix in cosy cafés, wearing Western clothes, including loose dresses, chitchatting about their future education and work plans.
Freshta and her generation — born in an era of Western-supported democracy — never imagined that the freedoms they grew up enjoying, including the right to attend school without a face covering, would be snatched from them.
“We were the girls who had just understood the love of Kabul. We were used to the city,” she said of her time during the republic government. “But the fall of Kabul and return of the Taliban, it took us down from the sky to the ground.”
Despite massive international outrage and condemnation, the Taliban has yet to change its policies towards women and minority groups.
Last month, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan presented his report to the Human Rights Council. It found an increase in girls’ rights violations and gender-based discrimination.
“Women and girls are being erased from public life, peaceful dissent is not tolerated, violence and the threat of violence are used with impunity to control and instil fear in the population,” said Richard Bennett, UN special rapporteur. “This is compounded by an economic and humanitarian crisis that results in the denial of economic, social and cultural rights.”
No country in the world, including Canada, has yet recognized the terrorist group’s government since they seized power in mid-august 2021, mainly due to women’s rights violations and their rejection of inclusivity in the government.
“There is no chance that the Taliban will ever get diplomatic recognition as long as they continue this behaviour,” said Oates. “I think Canada’s doing a good job on that front.”
Canada has been a major donor to women’s capacity building over the last 20 years, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on women’s access to education and health care.
Global Affairs Canada called on the Taliban to reverse all restrictions on women and girls. “The fundamental rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan are being profoundly undermined, where the Taliban have made every effort to exclude women from the public sphere,” said Global Affairs spokesperson Marilyne Guèvremont, in an email to National Post. “Canada uses every opportunity to condemn the egregious restrictions imposed on women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban. We will continue to advocate forcefully for a firm and co-ordinated response by the international community in this regard. "
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based organization, said in its 2024 world report that the scheme of women’s rights abuses by the Taliban “amounts to the crime against humanity of gender persecution.”
“The Taliban needs to know that, as the authorities maintaining effective control in Afghanistan, they have international legal obligations under international human rights law. They should immediately reverse these bans and reverse the fundamental rights of women,” said Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, whose recent report findings reveal the prolonged ban on education and work has “serious implications for the quality of life and mental well-being.”
“The international community should seek opportunities to co-ordinate and work in concert to press Taliban leaders to remove all restrictions and revoke decrees and policies violating the rights of women and girls.”
Despite the Taliban’s crackdown on education for Afghan women and girls, Freshta isn’t giving up.
In 2020, after the U.S. agreed to begin withdrawing its troops from the country, Freshta survived an explosion at an educational centre in the west part of Kabul. She was with hundreds of teenagers who were studying preparation courses for university entrance exams when a bomber killed more than 20 students and injured dozens more in an attack claimed by an Islamic State offshoot in Afghanistan.
Freshta has recently started improving her English language skills by studying at home. She hopes to get a full scholarship overseas. Still, the Taliban shut down licensed centres for taking TOEFL and IELTS English-language exams in Kabul. Most universities in the West require internationally recognized English tests.
“They have not banned us from schools and universities but from all parts of society,” she said. “The only reason is our gender and being a woman.”