Women in Afghanistan still fight for human rights as world celebrates 100th year of International Women’s Day

Since the 10 years of western invasion Afghan women have been able to enter politics, attend schools and walk the streets without a male guardian.

But the Taliban are still controlling parts of the country where women’s rights are non-existent. They are notorious for depriving women of basic human rights in the name of Islam.

Zarghona Rassa, founder of the British Afghan Women’s Society and the producer of ‘Fears behind the Veil’ a documentary filmed in 2007, claims “nothing has changed for women in Afghanistan post-Taliban. Women in there are still subject to heavy domestic violence and injustice”

Many dismiss the lack of women’s rights in Afghanistan as being part of their culture and religion.

Kori Abdul Vakil, a religious leader from the Afghan Islamic Cultural Centre in London argues: “What the Taliban have been doing to women in Afghanistan is against the teachings of the Holy Qur’an, it is also against humanity.”

He passionately stated: “For years now, the Taliban have excluded women from education, they banned them from working, and they have been brutal in their treatment of women. None of this is in the religion of Islam.”

Shirin Ebadi, a human rights activist and Nobel Prize winner during her talk on Women’s Role in Middle East at School of Oriental and African Studies insisted: “the rise of Islamic fundamentalism above all and in the first instance targets women’s rights.”

Perhaps Islamic fundamentalism is one of the reasons why many Muslims have been demanding democracy but Afghanistan is unlikely to follow.


Vakil concludes: “If the government continues to work as it has been Afghanistan will not see peace for another thousand years.”