VIOLENCE – Violence Against Women is Ongoing
Afghanistan is the worst country in the world to be born a woman. Countless statistics and reports from the UN, which in a recent statement called the Taliban’s treatment of women “a crime against humanity,” Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, to name the most reputable sources, support this claim. However, these sources can only report partial data, as Afghan women rarely report violence against them, especially since August 2021, when the Taliban regained power and imposed an extremely restrictive interpretation of Sharia (in Islamic lexicon, “the sacred law imposed by God”).
The inhumane violence against Afghan women is not only physical but also psychological; today in Afghanistan, women are excluded from life. They have no access to secondary education, cannot work (and for the millions of widows, this means having nothing to support themselves and their families), cannot visit parks and gyms, cannot work for NGOs, cannot leave home without a male relative, and are required to cover themselves from head to toe with a black veil or burqa. Men are held responsible for the behavior of the women in their families and are thus punished and sanctioned if the women do not act as prescribed; this “rule” constitutes a heavy blackmail on society as a whole.
Where prohibitions and tradition are not enough, fear forces women to stay inside: “It is said that the Taliban take girls to give to their soldiers, so families prevent them from going out even to buy bread. More and more girls, confined at home and unable to attend school, are experiencing sleep disorders and mental health issues,” reports from Kabul describe.
Activists, those who resist, who have been and continue to be at the forefront of peaceful protests to assert women’s rights, are arrested, imprisoned, tortured; often, their fate remains unknown.
But Afghan women have not only been subjected to violence since August 2021: violence against them is endemic, and the 20-year USA and NATO occupation, carried out under the pretext of wanting to liberate women, certainly did not solve the problem.
A 2015 report published by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights described the situation at that time: over 87.2% of women experienced domestic violence at various levels (physical, psychological, sexual, through forced and early marriages); in most cases, perpetrators of these crimes were not convicted if the courts determined that the violence was perpetrated because of the woman’s disobedience.
Forced and early marriages are widespread: by law, the minimum age for marriage is 18 for males and 16 for females, but despite this, it is a prevalent practice.
A study conducted by the Afghanistan Multi Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) certified that 15.2 percent of women interviewed were married before the age of 15 and 46.4 percent before 18. This phenomenon is the root cause of most domestic violence and often leads victims to inflict serious self-harm or seek death by self-immolation. Girls who refuse forced marriages and flee risk being killed by their own families: between 2011 and 2012, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 280 cases.
Before the Taliban returned to power, women who had the courage to escape extreme situations could resort to shelters for abused women which, although insufficient and often poorly organized, offered an escape route. Today, the Taliban have ordered the closure of all shelters, sending victims back to their tormentors.
The shelter workers themselves are also in danger, being easily traceable and subject to retaliation by the Taliban, who search for those they consider “enemies” house by house with raids and thorough searches.
In the community, the situation does not improve: in a country at war for over 40 years, women are the primary victims of kidnappings and rapes, and in conservative, patriarchal Afghan society, the victim bears the shame. Women are considered the guardians of “family honor,” and in cases of rape, they are seen as those who dishonor the family.