Afghan women face grim future as aid cuts compound Taliban repression, UN envoy warns
NEW YORK CITY: Five years after the Taliban seized control of Kabul for the second time, Afghan women and girls are trapped in what the UN’s top official responsible for the issue described as an unparalleled crisis of rights, which has been worsened by a collapse in international funding that is stripping away the last of the lifelines available to them.
Susan Ferguson, the special representative for UN Women in Afghanistan, said on Friday that the de facto authorities in the country have issued more than 100 decrees since August 2021 that systematically dismantled women’s rights.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls face such sweeping restrictions on education, work, movement, public participation and legal equality, she added. The past year alone has brought new edicts that further restrict their access to justice and formally erase legal equality of women with men.
Under Decree Number 12, for example, a husband is only criminally liable for domestic violence if he causes severe, visible injuries, and his wife must prove this in court accompanied by a male guardian, who might be the very person who harmed her.
