Women demonstrate during a gathering for National Teachers Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, October 5, 2021. © 2021 AP Photo/Ahmad Halabisaz |
The Taliban’s ‘Nightmare’ Rule in Afghanistan |
One year since the Taliban captured Kabul, Afghans have been living a human rights nightmare.
Taliban authorities have decimated women’s and girls’ rights, detained, tortured, or executed critics and opponents, and pressed its boot to the media’s throat.
Meanwhile, the country’s economy has collapsed, and more than 90 percent of Afghans have largely gone hungry for nearly a year, causing millions of children to suffer from acute malnutrition and, potentially, serious long-term health problems. |
Since taking power, the Taliban banned women from traveling or even going to work without a male family member accompanying them. They barred women from many jobs. The Taliban has trampled girls' right to education, denying almost all girls access to secondary school.
These misogynistic policies also mean many women and girls lack access to basic rights – to livelihood, food, water, and health care. |
Taliban abuses have brought widespread condemnation and imperiled international efforts to address the country’s dire humanitarian situation. The country’s economic collapse occurred largely because governments have cut foreign assistance and restricted international economic transactions to punish the Taliban.
And governments should be appalled by Taliban abuses. Yet the result is acute hunger, pervasive across Afghanistan. Although food is available in markets, as are supplies, people have no money to buy what they need. Families have skipped meals, go whole days without eating, or take extreme measures to pay for food, like sending children to work.
Almost 20 million people – half the population – are at level-3 “crisis” or level-4 “emergency” levels of food insecurity, according to the assessment system of the World Food Programme. One province teeters on the brink of famine. |
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A butcher waits for customers in Kabul, Afghanistan, February 21, 2022. © 2022 AP Photo/Hussein Malla |
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Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has produced numerous reports on Taliban human rights abuses and a Q&A on Afghanistan’s humanitarian and economic crisis, including recommendations to mitigate it.
Foreign governments should ease restrictions on Afghanistan’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid. While the Taliban have created the nightmare, to compound the crisis and suffering of Afghans is unconscionable.
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