カテゴリー: Women under the Taliban
Banned from education, a clandestine reading circle meets every week to pore over novels by Abbas Maroufi, Zoya Pirzad and Ernest HemingwayFour young women sit together, waiting for the phone to ring. When the call finally comes, their friend’s voice i…
‘Send your daughters or you get no aid’: the Taliban are making religious schools girls’ only option
Food handouts and employment are increasingly tied to Afghan families’ agreement to strict Islamic educationWhen the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, Nahid, 24, was midway through an economics degree. She had hoped to work in a …
The clandestine businesses – a financial lifeline for many women – have been given a month to cease operationsThe Taliban have issued an order targeting underground beauty salons operating in secret across Afghanistan, warning the women running them th…
The clandestine businesses – a financial lifeline for many women – have been given a month to cease operationsThe Taliban have issued an order targeting underground beauty salons operating in secret across Afghanistan, warning the women running them th…
Those who fled Afghanistan fearing gender apartheid have been forced back to live in a society in which, without a male ‘guardian’, they cannot work or rent a home, leaving them in poverty and open to abuseSafia* thought she had finally found safety …
Rights activists hail move to arrest Haibatullah Akhundzada and Afghan chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for crimes against humanityThe international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for two senior Taliban leaders, accusing them of crimes agai…
Thousands of lone women forced to return face extreme repression and destitution under Taliban laws that forbid them to work or travel without a male guardianWomen forced back to living under the Taliban’s increasingly repressive regime have spoken of …
Hundreds of women forced to confess to ‘moral crimes’ they did not commit have been publicly lashed in AfghanistanThree Afghan women who were brutally flogged in public by the Taliban after being accused of “moral crimes” have bravely spoken out about …
‘I begged them, my daughter was dying’: how Taliban male escort rules are killing mothers and babies
The need for women to be accompanied by a man in public is blocking access to healthcare and contributing to soaring mortality rates, say expertsIt was the middle of the night when Zarin Gul realised that her daughter Nasrin had to get to the hospital …