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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's capital and largest city. Afghanistan's population is estimated to be between 36–50 million.
The treatment of women by the Taliban includes the actions and policies by two distinct Taliban regimes in Afghanistan which are either specific or highly commented upon, mostly due to discrimination, since they first took control in 1996. During their first rule of Afghanistan, the Taliban were notorious internationally for their misogyny and violence against women. In 1996, women were mandated to wear the burqa at all times in public. In a systematic segregation sometimes referred to as gender apartheid, women were not allowed to work, nor were they allowed to be educated after the age of eight. Women seeking an education were forced to attend underground schools, where they and their teachers risked execution if caught. They were not allowed to be treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a male chaperone, which led to illnesses remaining untreated. They faced public flogging and execution for violations of the Taliban's laws.
Nadia Anjuman was a poet from Afghanistan.
Education in Afghanistan includes K–12 and higher education, which is under the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education. In 2021, there were nearly 10 million students and 220,000 teachers in Afghanistan. The nation still requires more schools and teachers. Soon after the Taliban take took the country in August 2021, they banned girls from secondary education. Some provinces still allow secondary education for girls despite the ban. In December 2022, the Taliban government also prohibited university education for females in Afghanistan, sparking protests and international condemnation. In December 2023, investigations were being held by the United Nations into the claim that Afghan girls of all ages were allowed to study at religious schools. As of November 2024, some parts of the country allow women to attend religious schools to pursue dentistry, nursing, and other subjects.
Sakena Yacoobi is an Afghan activist known for her work for promoting access to education for women and children. She is the founder and executive director of the women-led NGO Afghan Institute of Learning. For her work, Yacoobi has received international recognition, including the 2013 Opus Prize, the 2015 WISE Prize, the 2016 Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education, and an honorary degree from Princeton University.
Sex segregation refers to the physical and spatial separation of humans by sex in public or private places. In public places, women are forced to wear the burqa at all times, because, according to one Taliban spokesman, "the face of a woman is a source of corruption" for men not related to them (Non-Mahram).
Women's rights in Afghanistan are severely restricted by the Taliban. In 2023, the United Nations termed Afghanistan as the world's most repressive country for women. Since the US troops withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban gradually imposed restrictions on women's freedom of movement, education, and employment. Women are banned from studying in secondary schools and universities, making Afghanistan the only country to prohibit females from studying beyond the sixth grade. Women are not allowed in parks, gyms, or beauty salons. They are forbidden from going outside for a walk or exercise, from speaking or showing any part of their face or body outside the home, or even from singing or reading from within their own homes if they could be heard by strangers outside. In extreme cases, women have reportedly been subjected to gang-rape and torture in Taliban prisons.
Islām Qala is a border town in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, near the Afghanistan–Iran border. It is the official port of entry by land from neighboring Taybad in Iran. The Dowqarun-Islam Qala border crossing is located about 10 km (6.2 mi) northwest of the town.
Maria Bashir is a prosecutor based in Afghanistan and the only woman to ever hold such a position in the country as of 2009. With more than fifteen years of experience with Afghan civil service - the Taliban, corrupt policemen, death threats, failed assassination attempts - she has seen them all. She was banned from working during the Taliban period, when she spent her time schooling girls illegally at her residence, when it was illegal for women to be seen unescorted by men on the streets. In the post-Taliban era, she was called back into service, and was made the Chief Prosecutor General of Herat Province in 2006. With her main focus on eradicating corruption and oppression of women, she handled around 87 cases in 2010 alone.
Fawzia Koofi is an Afghan politician, writer, and women's rights activist. Originally from Badakhshan province and ethnically Tajik, Koofi was recently a member of the Afghan delegation negotiating peace with the Taliban in Doha Qatar. She is an ex Member of Parliament in Kabul and was the Vice President of the National Assembly.
Roya Mahboob is an Afghan businesswoman. She founded and is CEO of the Afghan Citadel Software Company, a full-service software development company based in Herat, Afghanistan. She has received attention for being among the first IT female CEOs in Afghanistan, where it is still relatively rare for women to work outside the home. On 18 April 2013, Mahboob was named to TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2013 for her work in building internet classrooms in high schools in Afghanistan and for Women's Annex, a multilingual blog and video site hosted by Film Annex. This was the 10th anniversary of the TIME special edition. The Women's Annex platform give the women of Afghanistan and Central Asia a platform to tell their stories to the world. The TIME magazine introduction to Mahboob was written by Sheryl Sandberg who is the chief operating officer of Facebook and the author of "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead". U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Mahboob and other Afghan women entrepreneurs at the International Center for Women's Economic Development at the American University of Afghanistan. She is also known for her work with online film distribution platform and Web Television Network Film Annex on the Afghan Development Project. She is an advisor at the Forbes School of Business & Technology.
Fereshteh Forough is an Afghan social activist and the CEO and founder of Code to Inspire (CTI), the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan. She is an advocate for gender equality and the empowerment of women in developing countries through digital literacy, education, and financial independence.
Homeira Qaderi born in 1980 is an Afghan writer, advocate for women's rights, and professor of Persian literature, currently serving as a Robert G. James Scholar Fellow at Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Research, Harvard University.
Somaya Faruqi is an Afghan student and engineer, and the captain of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, also known as the "Afghan Dreamers." She was named to the BBC's 100 Women in 2020 and was featured by UNICEF in 2020 as well as the UN Women Generation Equality campaign in 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, her team designed a prototype ventilator to help fight the coronavirus in Afghanistan.
Protests in Afghanistan held by Islamic democrats and feminists against the treatment of women by the Taliban began on 17 August 2021, following the fall of Kabul. Supported by the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, the protesters also demanded decentralization, multiculturalism, social justice, labor, education, and food. Pro-Taliban counterprotests also took place.
The Fall of Herat was a battle and subsequent capture of Herat by Taliban fighters. The attack on the city started around 28 July 2021, and ended in Taliban victory by 13 August of the same year. Several of the surrounding districts fell to the Taliban from June to mid-July, leaving only the city and two other districts in government hands by 10 July. The border crossings in Herat Province were captured by the Taliban on 9 July, raising prices of goods inside the city. Ismail Khan, former governor and warlord, led a public uprising force to assist the Afghan National Security Forces in defending the city.
Roshanak Wardak is an Afghan gynaecologist and former politician from Maidan Wardak Province. In 2021, she was named as one of the BBC's 100 Women, alongside fifty other Afghan women.
Hoda Khamosh, born in 1996, is an Afghan journalist, poet, and a women's rights activist.
Razia Barakzai is an Afghan women's rights activist. She was named one of the BBC's 100 Women in 2021 for leading the first women's protests against the Taliban in August 2021, following their takeover of Afghanistan earlier that month.
Pashtana Durrani is an Afghan feminist, activist, and educator. She is the founder of LEARN Afghanistan, the country’s first digital school network, dedicated to providing education to Afghan children and women, particularly focusing on girls’ education and women’s rights.
References
- ↑ "An online school brings Afghan girls hope — Assembly | Malala Fund". Assembly. 2022-03-07. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ "The Woman Defying The Taliban On Girls' Education". The Organization for World Peace. 2021-11-04. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ Ghayour, Angela (2021-12-02). "'When the Taliban returned, I set up a free online school to help thousands of girls in Afghanistan'". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235 . Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ "The teacher defying the Taliban on girls' education". 2021-11-03. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑ "BBC 100 Women 2021: Who is on the list this year?". 2021-12-07. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
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