Oct 15 (IPS) –
CIVICUS discusses Afghanistan’s system of gender apartheid with Shaharzad Akbar, Government Director of Rawadari, a human rights organisation based by Afghans in exile.
Since regaining energy in August 2021, the Taliban have banned ladies from all training past major college and most jobs. They do not enable ladies to journey and not using a male guardian or be seen in public, with extreme penalties for violations. A brand new legislation launched in August 2024 additional silenced ladies by actually banning them from being heard in public. This acquired widespread worldwide condemnation. Afghan civil society, principally in exile, continues to doc human rights abuses, advocate with worldwide allies and marketing campaign for change.
Not a lot. Though there’s nonetheless some civic resistance, primarily led by ladies, the Taliban have dismantled nearly all civic constructions. They’ve disbanded pupil associations and lecturers’ unions and severely restricted the house for civil society to function.
Lengthy earlier than they took energy, the Taliban focused civil society activists, journalists and spiritual and tribal leaders who challenged their guidelines. However after they regained energy in August 2021, they used state establishments to additional limit civic house. It was ladies who resisted: simply at some point after the Taliban seized Kabul, they took to the streets to demand their rights. Unbiased media cautiously tried to cowl these protests, however journalists have been crushed and tortured. By January 2022, the Taliban have been arresting ladies protesters. Circumstances of arbitrary detention, torture and intimidation and enforced disappearances have solely elevated since then.
The Taliban repealed legal guidelines defending journalists and civil society, elevated censorship and used intimidation to silence unbiased media. Anybody who criticises their authorities, even when it is a social media submit questioning electrical energy cuts, is more likely to obtain a cellphone name from the Taliban’s intelligence company ordering them to delete it and to not elevate the difficulty once more.
It is now not possible to work overtly on human rights or freedom of expression in Afghanistan. The Taliban shut down the organisation I headed, the Afghanistan Unbiased Human Rights Fee (AIHRC). Different organisations engaged on cultural rights, peacebuilding and social points have both modified their mandates or left.
How have the Taliban responded to ladies’s resistance?
After they returned to energy, the Taliban have been shocked to see ladies take to the streets towards them. Given the Taliban’s violent previous, many males did not dare protest. However ladies, who the Taliban underestimated as a result of they noticed them as weak, stood collectively and challenged them publicly.
At first they thought the protests would die down, however when this did not occur, they responded with elevated violence, imprisoning and torturing ladies activists and focusing on their households. Additionally they launched a smear marketing campaign accusing them of not being ‘genuine’ Afghan ladies. Since then, they’ve tried to impose the concept Afghan ladies belong at dwelling, totally coated and with none public aspirations.
Many repressive decrees adopted. First, ladies have been segregated from males in universities, then required to cowl up much more and eventually banned altogether from universities in December 2022. Restrictions on ladies’s work additionally elevated over time: ladies have been first restricted to the federal government well being and training sectors they usually have been later banned from working for civil society organisations and the United Nations (UN). The consequence was a full-blown system of gender apartheid.
However ladies refused to be erased and located new methods to withstand. Some have continued to protest publicly, even at nice threat to their lives and people of their households. A notable instance is a protester who was detained together with her four-year-old son. Others have opted for extra delicate types of resistance, establishing clandestine faculties and looking for training delivered by way of WhatsApp by Afghan diaspora and worldwide educators. Ladies’s rights activists, each inside and out of doors Afghanistan, have fashioned advocacy networks which can be very lively in worldwide and regional boards.
When was Rawadari based and what does it do?
Rawadari was publicly launched in December 2022 by a bunch of exiled former AIHRC workers. We had been documenting human rights abuses for over a decade and have been compelled into exile when the Taliban got here to energy. We arrange Rawadari as a result of we felt it was essential to proceed monitoring and documenting the scenario, and to counter the disinformation being unfold by the Taliban.
Rawadari’s work focuses on three areas. The primary is human rights monitoring. Up to now, we’ve revealed 9 experiences, obtainable in English and Afghanistan’s two primary languages, Dari and Pashto. We wish to guarantee they’re accessible to each native and worldwide audiences.
Our second space is advocacy, significantly on accountability and victim-centred justice. We usually submit experiences to the UN and push for the Taliban to be introduced earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice and Worldwide Felony Courtroom. We additionally advocate for added assets for the UN Particular Rapporteur on Afghanistan and are exploring different mechanisms, such because the institution of a individuals’s tribunal for Afghanistan.
The third focus of our work is to advertise a tradition of human rights. That is tough as a result of, being outdoors Afghanistan, we’ve to do it by social media campaigns and on-line discussions and occasions. However we attempt to hold the dialog going and construct alliances throughout the human rights neighborhood and past.
How are you campaigning for girls’s rights?
In June this 12 months, it was 1,000 days for the reason that Taliban banned ladies from going to high school. To boost consciousness and hold the difficulty alive in individuals’s minds, we launched the Iqra marketing campaign (‘learn’ in Arabic). We labored with Musawer, an organisation led by the famend Afghan poet Shafiqa Khpalwak.
As we could not use video footage for safety causes, we requested ladies to report a brief audio clip about how the ban on training affected them. This wasn’t straightforward, as a result of many ladies do not have their very own telephones and figuring out them might put them in danger. However we managed to assemble voices from throughout Afghanistan.
The marketing campaign was successful as a result of it centred the voices of Afghan ladies from each nook of the nation and introduced them to the fore, and since it gained assist from women and men. Women spoke in regards to the goals they’ve misplaced, the friendships they miss and the despair and unfavorable ideas they battle on daily basis. Some mentioned they’d witnessed early marriages amongst their buddies. All of them appealed to the worldwide neighborhood to assist their proper to training. Some clips reached 1000’s of individuals, and distinguished Afghan singers, TV personalities and different celebrities amplified the message and known as for the reopening of ladies’ faculties.
We have additionally not too long ago labored with Femena, a regional organisation, to launch a marketing campaign in response to the latest ban on ladies’s voices in public areas. Afghan ladies, at nice threat, started singing as a type of protest. To point out solidarity, we requested individuals world wide to share a track, poem or message of assist every week. So we proceed working to ensure Afghan women and girls are heard and never forgotten.
What challenges do you face in your work?
One of many primary obstacles we face is the whole closure of the bodily areas wherein we used to work. We won’t maintain programmes in faculties, universities or mosques in Afghanistan, nor can we converse overtly about human rights points with out placing individuals at critical threat. This severely limits our potential to have face-to-face conversations, that are essential for mobilising assist and constructing relationships.
One other main problem is gathering and verifying info. Previously, when there was a violent assault, we might go to hospitals and different native services to get particulars. Now the Taliban have ordered these services to not share delicate info. Households of victims and survivors are additionally typically afraid to talk out, making it tough for us to doc critical violations reminiscent of disappearances. Even after we promise them full and strict confidentiality, households are too afraid to return ahead.
It is usually a problem to guard our community in Afghanistan. One thing so simple as compensating individuals for his or her communication or transportation prices might put them at risk. We won’t organise collective on-line coaching periods as a result of individuals might reveal their identities to one another, rising the dangers.
On the advocacy entrance, our greatest problem is the shortage of political will. Afghanistan has largely fallen off the worldwide agenda and lots of western nations, significantly the USA, are reluctant to become involved. There is a common notion that Afghanistan is a failed intervention they wish to transfer on from, which ends up in a scarcity of funding in bettering the scenario, significantly on this election 12 months. International consideration and assets have additionally shifted to different crises such because the battle in Gaza.
This dangers normalising the Taliban regime. Neighbouring nations, together with China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, are regularly creating relations with it. We concern that the Taliban regime, which isn’t but formally recognised by any nation, might ultimately achieve the worldwide recognition it seeks regardless of its coverage of gender apartheid.
What worldwide assist does Afghan civil society want?
Humanitarian help is essential to assembly speedy wants, nevertheless it does not deal with the underlying issues. There’s an pressing want to enhance the economic system, however the worldwide neighborhood should discover methods to do that with out empowering the Taliban, who do not actually care in regards to the wellbeing of Afghan individuals.
States have to be cautious to keep away from actions that might be seen as accepting the Taliban’s repressive insurance policies and result in their normalisation. For instance, after they have interaction diplomatically with the Taliban, they need to embrace ladies and civil society representatives of their delegations. It is not about stopping engagement with the Taliban; it is about guaranteeing each interplay sends a powerful message in regards to the significance of human rights, and particularly ladies’s rights.
Individuals world wide also can assist by urging their governments to take a principled method of their engagement with the Taliban, prioritise ladies’s rights, maintain the Taliban accountable and assist training programmes, scholarships and initiatives for Afghan ladies and ladies. They’ll additionally assist organisations that marketing campaign for his or her rights.
Even easy acts of solidarity like singing a track and studying a poem in assist of Afghan ladies, if accomplished collectively, can hold the worldwide highlight on Afghanistan, give hope to ladies and ladies in Afghanistan and due to this fact make a distinction.
Get in contact with Rawadari by its web site or Fb and Instagram pages, observe @rawadari_org and @ShaharzadAkbar on Twitter, and phone Shaharzad on LinkedIn.
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