Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 17th Feb. UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UN Women, and International Organization for Migration on Friday issued a latest survey reported that Afghan women fear arrest, harassment and further punishment whenever a new Taliban decree is announced based on an extensive survey of Afghan women across the country.
According to testimony from 745 Afghan women participating in the latest survey stated that the survey showed that police enforcement has increased harassment in public spaces and further limited women’s ability to leave their homes.
The reports of the arbitrary and severe enforcement of the hijab decree is cited particularly in Kabul, the agencies said which began publishing quarterly consultations with diverse Afghan women a year after the Taliban took power in August 2021.
The de facto authorities have introduced over 50 decrees that directly curtail the rights and dignity of women, the report stated.
UN Women, IOM and UNAMA said that the consultations took place between 27 January and 8 February, with gathering views online and in-person where it was safe to do so and via group sessions and individual tele surveys.
The agencies were able to reach women across all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
The report said that participants were asked to give views on the period from October to December 2023.
The results showed thhat women fear arrest and the long-lasting stigma and shame associated with being taken into police custody, the report stated.
Over 57 per cent of women felt unsafe leaving the house without a mahram, a male guardian. Risks to their security and their anxiety levels increased whenever a new decree was announced specifically targeting them.
The report added that only one per cent of women indicated that they had “good” or “full” influence on decision making at the community level, a major decrease from 17 per cent in January 2023.
It said that a lack of any safe public space for women to gather and share views and experiences, build communities and engage on issues they considered important left them “without a pathway to participate in or influence decision making”.
Women’s self-reported “good” or “full” influence over household decisions has drastically decreased from 90 per cent in January 2023 to just 32 per cent this January.
The report found that women continued to link their lack of rights, educational prospects and jobs, to declining influence at home.
The women outlined the intergenerational and gendered impact of the de facto authorities’ restrictions and the accompanying conservative shifts in social attitudes towards children.
Some respondents said boys appeared to be internalizing the social and political subordination of their mothers and sisters, reinforcing a belief that they should remain in the home in a position of servitude.
The girls’ perceptions of their prospects were changing their values and understanding of their future and potential, the findings showed.
The report indicated that 32% of respondents began international recognition of the de facto authorities should happen only after reversing all restrictions, while 25 per cent said it should follow the reversal of some specific bans and 28 per cent said that recognition should not happen at all, under any circumstances.
In July 2023, 96 per cent of women maintained that recognition should only occur after improvements in women’s rights or that it should not occur at all.
The report said that some respondents expressed deep disappointment with some UN Member States who in their efforts to engage the Taliban, were overlooking the severity of what is an unprecedented women’s rights crisis and the associated violations of international law, based on treaties ratified by previous Afghan governments.
Some respondents argued that one way for the international community to improve their situation would be to link international aid to better conditions for women and to provide opportunities for women to talk directly with the Taliban, it concluded.
