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Taliban's New Law Erases Women, Justifying Violence Against Them

The Taliban's latest "vice and virtue" law strips Afghan women of their most basic rights, silencing their voices and erasing them from public life.

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Taliban's New Law Erases Women, Justifying Violence Against Them | Representative Image | Courtesy: Special arrangement

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Taliban's War on Women's Rights Intensifies

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing oppressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, especially those of women and girls.

But a newly passed “vice and virtue” law goes further. It is among the most repressive and discriminatory measures ever enacted by the Islamist fundamentalist group.

As a human rights activist from Afghanistan, and as a scholar working on Afghanistan since 2002, we have been documenting the Taliban’s attacks against women for decades.

The new law seeks to completely silence women in public. They are prohibited from speaking, singing or praying aloud. The law also attempts to literally erase them from view, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.

The edict suppresses most of women’s political, civil and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to repress them.

A Return to Power

Generations of women who grew up in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and who are now living in Afghanistan and abroad, have responded to the vice and virtue law with disbelief and horror.

After 2001, when the Taliban were removed from power, millions of Afghan women and girls went to school. They became professionals – lawyers, artists, athletes, engineers and huma

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