The Taliban’s latest crackdown on women’s rights has drawn widespread condemnation from international bodies and human rights organizations, as the group imposes new “vice and virtue” laws that forbid women from speaking or showing their faces in public. These draconian measures, sanctioned by the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, further erode the already precarious status of women in Afghanistan, marking yet another step towards what many are calling a “gender apartheid.”
Under the new regulations, women are required to cover their entire bodies, including their faces, in thick clothing whenever they step outside their homes. The laws go further by declaring that women’s voices are potential instruments of vice, effectively banning them from being heard in public. This means that Afghan women are prohibited from speaking, singing, or reading aloud, even within their homes if there is a chance their voices might be heard outside.
“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body,” the laws state, underscoring the extent to which the Taliban seeks to control and silence Afghan women. Men are also subjected to restrictions, though less severe, with a requirement to cover their bodies from the navel to the knees when in public.
The laws also enforce strict social segregation, forbidding women from making direct eye contact with men to whom they are not related by blood or marriage. Furthermore, taxi drivers face severe penalties if they transport a woman unaccompanied by a male relative, a rule that significantly restricts women’s mobility.
The UN and human rights groups have reacted with horror to these new laws. Roza Otunbayeva, the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, described the situation as a severe extension of the “intolerable restrictions” already imposed on Afghan women and girls since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. “It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” Otunbayeva said. “Even the sound of a female voice outside the home is now apparently deemed a moral violation.”
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Legal experts and activists are also sounding the alarm. Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, president of the Afghan Lawyers Association, criticized the laws as being in direct contradiction to both Afghanistan’s domestic and international legal obligations. He pointed out that these measures violate fundamental principles of Islam, which does not endorse the promotion of virtue through force or coercion. Sadat also emphasized that the laws contravene all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, underscoring the illegitimacy of the Taliban’s actions.
Fawzia Koofi, a prominent Afghan human rights activist and the first female vice-president of the Afghan parliament, expressed her deep concern over the global community’s relative silence in response to these oppressive measures. “When they say women cannot speak in public because they regard women’s voices as a form of intimacy, it is incredibly frightening,” Koofi said. “Yet the whole world acts like this is normal. The Taliban are emboldened by this indifference. It is not only women but all human beings they are targeting. They must be held accountable.”
Shukria Barakzai, a former Afghan parliamentarian and ambassador to Norway, echoed Koofi’s sentiments, condemning the international community for its lack of decisive action against the Taliban’s oppressive regime. “It is concerning that international organizations, particularly the United Nations and the European Union, instead of standing against these inhumane practices, are trying to normalize relations with the Taliban,” Barakzai remarked. “They are, in a way, whitewashing this group, disregarding the fact that the Taliban are committing widespread human rights violations.”
Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have systematically dismantled the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. Before these new “vice and virtue” laws, women were already barred from secondary education, most forms of employment, public parks, gyms, and beauty salons. The introduction of these latest measures further isolates Afghan women, stripping them of their basic human rights and denying them any semblance of participation in public life.
The world watches as the Taliban continues to impose a regime of fear and repression, with Afghan women bearing the brunt of their harsh rule. The new laws not only erase women from the public sphere but also attempt to silence them entirely, leaving the international community with a pressing moral imperative to respond.
