Championing women’s rights in Afghanistan

Last week, a video went viral of Meryl Streep talking about Afghan women’s rights at the United Nations (UN). She said, in Afghanistan “a cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face… she may chase a squirrel into the park.” She went on, “a bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public.”

In the three years since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, they have increasingly tightened their net of gender apartheid, breaching the rights of women and girls across the country. Afghanistan is largely ruled by an increasing patchwork of decrees, policies, and systematised practices, some written, others verbal. Since August 2021, the Taliban has enacted more than 100 edicts, orders, and directives restricting the rights of women and girls. These apply in a range of jurisdictions—nationally, provincially, and in specific districts.

They closed the parks to women and children in the weeks after taking control. Now, women are not even allowed to gather in the cemeteries where families mourn.

Last month, the supreme leader of the Taliban passed a new vice and virtue law forbidding women to show any part of their bodies, including their faces. They are obliged to wear lose fitting garments that are not made of thin fabric. They can’t be too short or too tight. They must also hide their bodies from men who are not their mahram (male guardian), and from any woman who is a non-believer.

The new law also requires women to hide their voices. They’re not allowed to be heard in public at all. They can’t speak outside the home and can be punished if their singing or recitations inside their homes are heard outside.

The Taliban like to say they are enforcing Afghan traditions and Islamic law. But poetry and song are deeply rooted in Afghan culture and this law also prohibits recitations of the Qur’an.

Women fought back against earlier dress codes imposed by the Taliban with the #DoNotTouchMyClothes campaign, showcasing the array of elaborate and colourful clothing from regions across the country, which do not include the Taliban’s ubiquitous burqa.

But the struggles Afghan women have been fighting have become more difficult as the years have passed. The Taliban have cracked down on women’s human rights defenders, beating them, imprisoning them, disappearing them, and subjecting them to the most heinous sexual torture while in prison.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke at the same high-level side event in New York as Streep. The purpose of the event was to discuss ways to include women in the future of Afghanistan. She said, “we stand with the women & girls who face a Taliban push to erase them from public life.”

Afghan women need more than words. Australia has been lagging in its implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security and the Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women’s General Recommendation 30 on the same subject. The Government is two years late in reporting on the multi-agency National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2021-2031.

It’s excellent the minister announced Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands will bring a case before the International Court of Justice for the Taliban’s breaches of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. But the Australian Government needs to pursue other practical approaches to support and protect Afghan women and girls as well.

In recent months, the Department of Home Affairs has been asking Afghan families to remove vulnerable women from visa applications. Upon further questioning, the department has tried to say these women do not meet the dependency criteria for visas. This is blatantly untrue in the context of Afghanistan when a woman is now entirely dependent on her family for physical security, and financial and psychological support. It is especially the case for older women, but also young women who are extremely vulnerable to forced marriage.

Visa applications for Afghan women’s rights defenders at extreme risk have also been flatly rejected by the department. They’ve provided reasons that include insufficient persecution of the applicant in their home country. Hundreds of workers for Australian aid organisations also remain in limbo after the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reneged on a promise to prioritise their visa processing.

Australian aid efforts to Afghanistan could be vastly improved. For years now, the humanitarian and development community has been pushing a localisation agenda. It has been made abundantly clear that women-led organisations need to be funded to ensure they have the capacity to fight for gender equality and deliver gender responsive aid.

But Australia’s vastly reduced aid to Afghanistan is being driven through large multilateral organisations when it is small organisations, including those managed by diaspora, who have proven able to navigate Taliban restrictions and continue running clandestine education programs for girls and health programs for women.

We can also do more in terms of justice and accountability. The women’s movement have been calling for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime against humanity. Australia has committed to advocate for this in the UN’s Sixth Committee negotiations on a new treaty on crimes against humanity. But we can also set an example by incorporating gender into the definition of the crime against humanity of apartheid in our own criminal code. At present, this crime appears in section 268.22 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

Discussions at the UN General Assembly in New York right now are important to keep the issue of Afghan women’s rights on the radar. However, as has always been the case, we need more action, not just words.

This article was published by the Australian Institute for International Affairs.