Women’s Rights

In Afghanistan’s Western City of Herat, the Taliban Government has forbidden men and women to dine or stroll the park together.  The restriction came after the Taliban last week announced that every woman in Afghanistan should cover up all their body parts in public that indicating a “tightens” Taliban rule.

Riazullah Seerat, a Taliban official at the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Herat, said on Thursday that authorities “have instructed that men and women to be segregated in restaurants”.

The owner of restaurants also has been notified that the restriction also applied to married couples. According to Al Jazeera, Saifullah a restaurant manager confirmed that he knew the information from the government first-hand “We have to follow the order, but it has a very negative impact on our business,” Saifullah said, adding that if the ban continues he will be forced to fire members of his staff.

The Taliban official also said that the government also had issued a decree that Herat’s public park should be gender-separated each gender could visit the park on a different day. “We have told women to visit parks on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday,” Seerat said, and men could visit the park for the other day.

Taliban seems to enforce more and more its ultra-conservative law, even though they did promise to be more liberal in their first press conference after they took office in August last year. The government seems to limit more and more activities for women. The driving instructor has been notified by the government to stop issuing licenses for women drivers, according to AFP.

The newest decree has broken such promises. The new Taliban have become more to look like the old Taliban that governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. In December last year, the Taliban has restricted women to travel more than 72km without men accompanying them. In January, the Taliban also did not seem to appoint women to serve in government. Last March, when the international public hoped that women will gain their rights under the Taliban the government closed schools for women.

Such decree that the Taliban has issued led Afghanistan to a humanitarian crisis and last March when the Taliban banned opium also led Afghanistan to an economic crisis. Actions that the Taliban took have made international organizations and countries stop their aid to Afghanistan and the situation in the country worsen.

In a joint statement of G7 released by France, the ministers called the Taliban to lift decrees and restrictions on women and to respect human rights. “With these measures, the Taliban are further isolating themselves from the international community,” the G7 foreign ministers and European Union foreign policy chief said.