Posts tagged: Women rights

Law, Control, Fear – and some Defiance: Citizens and enforcers talk about the ‘promotion of virtue and prevention of vice’

Kate Clark • AAN Team •

It has been more than a year since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan introduced a new vice and virtue law. This law lays out what behaviour and actions the Islamic Emirate deems obligatory or forbidden for Afghan men and women. It gives its enforcers wide-ranging powers to both police and punish ‘wrongdoers,’ who have no […]

21 Dec 2025

A Force for Good, or Source of Coercion? An Islamic scholar reflects on the Emirate’s morality law

John Butt •

The Islamic Emirate’s law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice lays out the behaviour and actions which it deems obligatory or forbidden for Afghan men and women. It also lays out the powers of the enforcers, who have been given extensive authority to impose penalties on those they deem wrongdoers. Today, we […]

21 Apr 2025

Shaking the Sky: Women’s attempts to claim their inheritance rights under the Emirate

Letty Phillips • Rama Mirzada •

Few aspects of Islamic Emirate rule in Afghanistan have received as much criticism as the sweeping restrictions on the lives of women and girls. Yet in response to this condemnation, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) claims that it has actually improved women’s lives by enforcing women’s rights guaranteed by sharia. These include a woman’s […]

2 Mar 2025

The Daily Hustle: How one woman blocked from teaching now runs a thriving tailoring business 

Rohullah Sorush • Roxanna Shapour •

In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from a woman who did most of her growing up under the first Islamic Emirate which banned girls of all ages from going to school. She came late to education, but strove to be a good student and managed to graduate from high school […]

7 Dec 2024

Could the Islamic Emirate be the Inspiration for a New Crime Against Humanity? Prospects for the gender apartheid campaign

Rachel Reid •

In the spring of 2023, a campaign was launched to create a new international crime of gender apartheid. Campaigners argue that the oppression of women and girls is so total and severe in Afghanistan and Iran that it is akin to the systematic and hierarchical racist oppression practised by apartheid South Africa. Their hope is […]

29 Nov 2024

Afghanistan in Front of the World Court? What can be expected from a legal challenge to the Emirate’s violations of women’s rights

Rachel Reid •

Afghanistan has been warned that its violations of women’s rights will trigger a referral to the United Nation’s highest court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – unless it changes its policies. The initiative, taken by Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands and supported by 22 other states, centres on alleged violations of the […]

3 Oct 2024

Education in Hibernation: The end of a virtuous cycle of literacy and empowerment for women in Shughnan?

Fabrizio Foschini •

The ban on girls’ secondary education, together with other policies by the Islamic Emirate, have severely affected the lives of female teachers across Afghanistan. This is seldom truer than it is in Shughnan, a mountainous district in Badakhshan province where men and women have long specialised in teaching, working in their own district and beyond. […]

17 Sep 2024

A Pay Cut for Afghan Women Working in the Public Sector: “What can you do with 5,000 afghanis?”

Jelena Bjelica • Roxanna Shapour •

The order by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), Hibatullah Akhundzada, to cut the salaries of women on the public payroll to just 5,000 afghanis (70 US dollars) a month was a bombshell. The Amir’s order was short and ambiguously worded, driving anxiety and speculation: did it apply to all women working […]

29 Jul 2024

How The Emirate Wants to be Perceived: A closer look at the Accountability Programme

Martine van Bijlert •

As the third anniversary of its return to power approaches, the Islamic Emirate is presumably readying itself for another round of its Accountability Programme, as it has done in the past two summers. These televised sessions, held by ministers and other senior officials in front of journalists, provide a fairly detailed overview of the Emirate’s […]

9 Jul 2024

From policing in Afghanistan to fleeing to Iran: a woman’s journey

Rukhshana, 23 January 2024 A heart-gripping AAN-style ‘daily hustle’ story, from another source, exiled Afghan women’s news platform Rukhshana, telling the gripping story of Badam Gul who went – before August 2021 – from being a fram worker together with her husband to, after his death, to join the women’s police in Balkh, driving taxi […]

23 Jan 2024

What Do Young Afghan Women Do? A glimpse into everyday life after the bans

Jelena Bjelica • AAN Team •

Since coming to power, the Taleban authorities have issued many edicts, decrees, declarations and directives limiting, restricting, suspending or banning basic freedoms for women and girls. Afghan women are no longer free to go to public parks, gyms and other public spaces and are banned from boarding planes and leaving the country on their own; they cannot […]

17 Aug 2023

Gender Persecution in Afghanistan: Could it come under the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation?

Ehsan Qaane •

Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taleban have enacted successive laws and orders which apply to women and girls, but not to men and boys. Earlier this month, United Nations experts reported their assessment that these measures violated women and girls’ rights to education, work, freedom of movement, health, bodily autonomy and […]

26 May 2023