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 schooling past major college and most jobs. They do not enable ladies to journey with out a male guardian or be seen in public, with extreme penalties for violations. A brand new regulation launched in August 2024 additional silenced ladies by actually banning them from being heard in public. This obtained widespread worldwide condemnation. Afghan civil society, largely 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 virtually all civic buildings. 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 non secular and tribal leaders who challenged their guidelines. However once they regained energy in August 2021, they used state establishments to additional limit civic house. It was ladies who resisted: simply someday after the Taliban seized Kabul, they took to the streets to demand their rights. Impartial media cautiously tried to cowl these protests, however journalists had been crushed and tortured. By January 2022, the Taliban had 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The Taliban repealed legal guidelines defending journalists and civil society, elevated censorship and used intimidation to silence impartial media. Anybody who criticises their authorities, even when it is a social media put up 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 unattainable to work brazenly on human rights or freedom of expression in Afghanistan. The Taliban shut down the organisation I headed, the Afghanistan Impartial 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?
Once they returned to energy, the Taliban had been shocked to see ladies take to the streets in opposition to 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 that Afghan ladies belong at dwelling, totally coated and with none public aspirations.
Many repressive decrees adopted. First, ladies had been segregated from males in universities, then required to cowl up much more and at last banned altogether from universities in December 2022. Restrictions on ladies’s work additionally elevated over time: ladies had been first restricted to the federal government well being and schooling sectors they usually had been later banned from working for civil society organisations and the United Nations (UN). The outcome 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 danger to their lives and people of their households. A notable instance is a protester who was detained along with her four-year-old son. Others have opted for extra refined types of resistance, organising clandestine colleges and in search of schooling delivered through WhatsApp by Afghan diaspora and worldwide educators. Ladies’s rights activists, each inside and outdoors Afghanistan, have shaped advocacy networks which can be very energetic in worldwide and regional boards.
When was Rawadari based and what does it do?
Rawadari was publicly launched in December 2022 by a gaggle of exiled former AIHRC employees. We had been documenting human rights abuses for over a decade and had been compelled into exile when the Taliban got here to energy. We arrange Rawadari as a result of we felt it was necessary to proceed monitoring and documenting the state of affairs, and to counter the disinformation being unfold by the Taliban.
Rawadari’s work focuses on three areas. The primary is human rights monitoring. Thus far, we’ve got revealed 9 stories, obtainable in English and Afghanistan’s two most important 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 recurrently submit stories to the UN and push for the Taliban to be introduced earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice and Worldwide Prison 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 troublesome as a result of, being exterior Afghanistan, we’ve got to do it by social media campaigns and on-line discussions and occasions. However we attempt to hold the dialog going and construct alliances inside the human rights group and past.
How are you campaigning for girls’s rights?
In June this 12 months, it was 1,000 days because the Taliban banned women from going to high school. To lift 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 women to file a brief audio clip about how the ban on schooling 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 collect voices from throughout Afghanistan.
The marketing campaign was a hit as a result of it centred the voices of Afghan women from each nook of the nation and introduced them to the fore, and since it gained assist from women and men. Ladies spoke concerning the desires they’ve misplaced, the friendships they miss and the despair and unfavourable ideas they battle day-after-day. Some mentioned they’d witnessed early marriages amongst their mates. All of them appealed to the worldwide group to assist their proper to schooling. Some clips reached hundreds of individuals, and distinguished Afghan singers, TV personalities and different celebrities amplified the message and referred to as for the reopening of women’ colleges.
We have additionally lately labored with Femena, a regional organisation, to launch a marketing campaign in response to the current ban on ladies’s voices in public areas. Afghan ladies, at nice danger, started singing as a type of protest. To point out solidarity, we requested individuals around the globe to share a track, poem or message of assist every week. So we proceed working to verify Afghan women and girls are heard and never forgotten.
What challenges do you face in your work?
One of many most important obstacles we face is the whole closure of the bodily areas wherein we used to work. We won’t maintain programmes in colleges, universities or mosques in Afghanistan, nor can we converse brazenly about human rights points with out placing individuals at severe danger. This severely limits our capacity to have face-to-face conversations, that are essential for mobilising assist and constructing relationships.
One other main problem is gathering and verifying data. Previously, when there was a violent assault, we’d go to hospitals and different native services to get particulars. Now the Taliban have ordered these services to not share delicate data. Households of victims and survivors are additionally usually afraid to talk out, making it troublesome for us to doc severe violations resembling disappearances. Even after we promise them full and strict confidentiality, households are too afraid to come back 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 contributors might reveal their identities to one another, growing the dangers.
On the advocacy entrance, our greatest problem is the dearth of political will. Afghanistan has largely fallen off the worldwide agenda and plenty 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 results in a scarcity of funding in enhancing the state of affairs, significantly on this election 12 months. World consideration and assets have additionally shifted to different crises such because the struggle in Gaza.
This dangers normalising the Taliban regime. Neighbouring nations, together with China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, are steadily growing relations with it. We worry that the Taliban regime, which isn’t but formally recognised by any nation, could ultimately acquire the worldwide recognition it seeks regardless of its coverage of gender apartheid.
What worldwide assist does Afghan civil society want?
Humanitarian assist is essential to assembly instant wants, however it does not tackle the underlying issues. There’s an pressing want to enhance the economic system, however the worldwide group should discover methods to do that with out empowering the Taliban, who do not actually care concerning the wellbeing of Afghan individuals.
States have to be cautious to keep away from actions that may very well be seen as accepting the Taliban’s repressive insurance policies and result in their normalisation. For instance, once they have interaction diplomatically with the Taliban, they have to embody 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 robust message concerning the significance of human rights, and particularly ladies’s rights.
Individuals around the globe may assist by urging their governments to take a principled strategy of their engagement with the Taliban, prioritise ladies’s rights, maintain the Taliban accountable and assist schooling programmes, scholarships and initiatives for Afghan ladies and women. They will 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 women in Afghanistan and subsequently make a distinction.
Get in contact with Rawadari by its web site or Fb and Instagram pages, comply with @rawadari_org and @ShaharzadAkbar on Twitter, and make contact with Shaharzad on LinkedIn.
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