“This is gender apartheid”: Plan International Australia statement on the latest attack on women and girls in Afghanistan

Girls rights and humanitarian organisation Plan International Australia condemns and is appalled by the new “vice and virtue” laws introduced by the Taliban this week, which have barred women from speaking, singing, reciting words aloud or showing their faces in public.

Since the Taliban leadership took control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, they have relentlessly oppressed women’s and girls’ rights, banning them from secondary school and higher education, denying them of their right to work, restricting their movement in public spaces and slowly erasing them from society.

Calling the new laws “horrifying and utterly heart-breaking”, Plan International Australia CEO Susanne Legena said that this latest attack on the women and girls of Afghanistan was like a scene out of a dystopian novel.

“What we are witnessing right now in Afghanistan is gender apartheid, and an attempt to completely take away women and girls’ agency and autonomy.

“The Taliban have claimed the sound of a woman’s voice in public will lead to “vice” – an outrageous and heinous claim. Having women and girls’ voices heard and acknowledged, allowing them a seat at the table, allowing them to contribute to society and educating them is one of the most important and powerful things we can do to achieve equality and will help us solve many of the world’s problems.

“Prior to 2021 we were encouraged by the hard-won progress we had seen in girls’ education and women’s rights in Afghanistan – girls were studying at universities, there were women judges and journalists and politicians, women actors and singers and artists. That has all been snatched away over the last three years. The world must not look away – we must protect and advocate for these girls and women in the loudest way possible.”

“We stand with the girls and women of Afghanistan – many of them bravely defying these attacks and bans. And we stand with the Afghan women and girls in the diaspora, who are also resisting and posting videos to social media of them singing about gender equality and reciting beautiful poetry. We see and are inspired by their agency and resilience and their refusal to be silenced,” she said.

Plan International Australia calls for an immediate end to the collective punishment of the women and girls of Afghanistan, which is grounded solely in harmful and discriminatory gender norms and practices, and an immediate restoration of women’s equal rights and freedoms as guaranteed them under the international human rights framework – including the UN CEDAW, which Afghanistan ratified in 2003; the UN CRC, ratified in 1994; the UN ICCPR, ratified in 1983; and the UN ICESCR, ratified in 1983.