Act for Women & Girls in Afghanistan
by Lynzy Billing
Today, Afghanistan is facing a series of unprecedented economic and humanitarian crises and now, with winter fast approaching, life for millions will become so much harder.
The wave of need is felt across every province. More than 23 million Afghans are at risk of severe food insecurity and the daily costs of living continue to climb.
Before the Taliban came to power in August last year, Afghanistan was already facing a nutritional crisis. Today, nearly half of the population are estimated to be acutely food-insecure. 4.7 million children & pregnant & lactating women are at risk of acute malnutrition in 2022 and 3.9 million children are acutely malnourished.
According to the United Nations, 15 years of economic growth were lost in just ten months. The banking system has effectively collapsed. In February the US Federal Reserve froze $7 billion in assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank. In September the US said it would move $3.5 billion to the new "Afghan Fund.”
The Taliban government remains isolated from its own countrymen and the west, not internationally recognised, with an ideological deadlock between the two is consigning millions of Afghans to destitution.
Meanwhile, Afghan women are being systematically erased from public life. They no longer have access to basic rights including education, and are facing restrictions to their employment, clothing, and freedom of movement.
I have focused much of my work on Afghan women over nearly four years in Afghanistan and particularly during the first year under the Taliban.
I met with mothers, wives and breadwinners who fill their homes with an abundance of love. As women are being pushed out of Afghan society by the Taliban, these women manage to pull on inner reserves of strength to support those who surround them.
I have visited hospitals to meet midwives who are still working, and I went to schools and workplaces to see what has changed in the last year. I met with women who have lost their jobs and livelihoods and are now sitting at home. Once active in their workplaces and now with nothing to do and no motivation.
A survey published by Reporters Without Borders, a global media monitor group, found that Afghanistan has lost nearly 60 percent of its journalists and 40 percent of its national media outlets since the Taliban regained control of the country a year ago. Of the 2,756 women journalists and media workers employed in Afghanistan prior to August 15, only 656 are still working, with 84.6 percent of them based in the Kabul region.
Some women fear for their lives. This year, the Taliban’s crackdown on journalists has become ever more oppressive and freedom of speech is being cuffed. Since August, reports of beatings, torture, arrests, dissaperances and killings have emerged.
Over the past year, at least 245 cases of censorship, detention and violence against media personnel have been reported, including two deaths, according to the Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFCJ), one of the few media support groups still left. UNAMA recorded human rights abuses of more than 200 reporters in Afghanistan since 2021, including arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment, threats and intimidation.
Women who have tried to stand up against the group by peacefully protesting in Kabul and other cities calling for the reopening of secondary schools for girls, work opportunities and political rights for women have been threatened, arrested, detained, physically and psychologically tortured, and forcibly disappeared, according to an Amnesty International report in July this year. To be freed, some women protestors were forced to pledge that they and their families would never protest again or speak publicly about their detention experiences. The Taliban instructed media outlets to stay away from peaceful protests. Journalists covering the protests have been arrested, detained and beaten.
Across the country, for girls, dreams have been stifled. It has been 437 days since the Taliban banned education for the vast majority of secondary school girls across the country.
Today, their younger sisters go to class without them. After grade 6, these girls’ futures will be in the hands of Afghanistan’s new government, and their future will be infinitely more difficult without the tools they need to find their paths forward.
There remains no sensical justification for the ban on their older sisters' education.
Afghanistan remains the only country in the world to ban girls from receiving an education.
“The Taliban ignore women. They think we will just disappear. But they forget that a whole generation of girls were brought up to not be forgotten. A generation that worked harder in school, and worked harder for their jobs. “We are half the population, they cannot ignore us.”