THE STATE OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS AFTER THE TALIBAN TAKE-OVER

ABSTRACT: Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and owing to multi-stakeholder efforts, Afghanistan achieved appreciable progress in women's rights until the Taliban forcibly overturned the democratically elected Afghan government in 2021. Afghan women earned many rights which the Taliban had taken away from 1996 to 2001.1 In the past two decades with the support of the international community, schools opened for girls, and women had the right to work. There was significant progress toward gender equality’s advocacy and mechanisms; the new Constitution of 2004 enshrined women's rights in it, and in 2009 Afghanistan adopted the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law which was an important step toward the elimination of violence and discrimination against women in Afghanistan after the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001.2 However, the status of women’s rights retrogressed after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan since August 15, 2021. The constitutional, legal and policy commitment to ensure women’s rights including the right to education is now being expunged by the Taliban, ultimately denying women and girls many of their fundamental rights.3 The Taliban's hardline gender discrimination makes this insurgent group one of the harshest groups toward women in Afghanistan. Their policies and actions limiting girls and women’s access to their fundamental rights, threaten to reverse all hard won achievements in the past two decades on gender equality and women’s rights, particularly on the right to education. The sadness in Afghan women stories and their fight for their rights is endless. This policy brief reviews and analyzes women's rights situation, including their mobility, the right to education, employment and political participation in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule. Considering the right to equality and non-discrimination enshrined in international human rights instruments including Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) among other international human rights law treaties, Afghan women should have access to their fundamental rights equally and without any discrimination. Afghan women should not be denied from their basic human rights merely based on their gender. More restrictions on women’s rights by the Taliban magnifies the gender rights gap, deepening inequality and increasing instances of normalized violence against women.