In Occasion of International Day of Education

Tuesday, Jan 24, 2023

While on January 24th, the International Education Day, the world competes in providing quality and inclusive educational services for life, what achievement does Afghanistan bring to the world? Ignorance, exclusion, and blocking education for women and girls – half of the country's population.

What is the world's practical response based on commitments to support and promote human rights values and implement sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the world to end this gender tragedy in Afghanistan?

What will be the world's response be to the 2030 commitment that No one will be left behind when Afghan women and girls are pushed back and marginalized?

Maybe like the Taliban, the world has also suspended its commitments to women's human rights in Afghanistan?

Depriving women and girls of the right to education is the worst human crime in contemporary human history, something no other government has done in recent history except the Taliban.
Afghanistan is the only country where women and girls are denied access to education and basic rights for the second time.

In 1996, when the Taliban first took power in Afghanistan, they wasted six years of girls' lives by keeping them away from school and work, a loss that was never compensated. No one was ever held responsible for committing this human crime either. Now, for the second time, girls and women are experiencing the same black politics and oppression, as the Taliban applies its misogynistic and extreme ideology to the women and girls of this land.

Unfortunately, the world not only did not prosecute the Taliban leaders for these crimes against humanity, but was unable to learn a lesson to prevent this violent, anti-human and anti-Islamic act.

Now in Afghanistan, women and girls have been imprisoned in their homes for exactly 17 months and 9 days, and some of them are screaming on the roads for their most basic human and Islamic rights, but it has no effect. Further, these protesting girls and women who did not commit any crime but rather are calling for justice and rights, have been insulted, threatened, imprisoned, tortured and punished by the Taliban.

Not only have women and girls of Afghanistan stood up and resisted, most of the institutions, various United Nations agencies, governments and organizations defending human rights and women's rights, authoritative Islamic authorities, including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, have also condemned this inhuman act and condemned the non-Islamic Taliban’s decisions in the strongest terms. These entities have repeatedly asked the Taliban to restore secondary schools for girls. In response, the Taliban has only increased the pressures and restrictions on women day by day, recently closing the gates of higher education and women's work in national and international non-governmental organizations.

Afghan women and girls inside and outside their country have turned to various international institutions, the United Nations and special representatives, various Islamic authorities and human rights organizations and individuals for solidarity and support.

But what has been the response? What has been the performance and the result?

The world community must admit that all of these sympathies, concurrences and solidarity are only condolence, condemnation, approval and demand left on words and paper.

Unfortunately, a significant performance with a changing situation or satisfactory solution has not been seen.

The brutality and horror of the Taliban against women and girls in Afghanistan has been a hot topic for the media. Speeches by politicians, policy makers and decision makers show that they are with Afghan women and girls and against the violation of their fundamental rights. They have sympathy. But the pain that Afghan women and girls endure with their flesh, skin and bones is difficult for other people in the world to understand because they have never been in that position.

It must be emphasized and clear to everyone that the Taliban, in order to gain recognition and legitimacy at the national and international level, have taken women and girls hostage – half of the population of Afghanistan, and have used religion as a tool for extremist goals. They twist religious ideas and use them against women. This understanding of Islamic religion has been repeatedly explained by well-known scholars and reliable Islamic authorities who explain that these actions of the Taliban are not based on the instructions of the holy religion of Islam and divine decrees, but are in contradiction to it. In other words, the Taliban completely follow the wrong interpretation of Islam.

The atrocities and deprivation of freedoms for women and girls in Afghanistan have reached a peak that they cannot bear it anymore.

The cold of winter is raging, and not only are girls and women deprived of education, but there is also a severe health crisis, women are completely deprived of political and social participation and they are not present in the leadership at all. The systematic elimination of women is suffocatingly and staggeringly fast. Women and girls are in a bad mental state, and there is fear and panic all over the country. Women are suffering gender-based violence. Women and children are starving to death.

Activists and defenders of human rights, former employees of the government and government institutions, former judges and parliamentarians, lawyers of the parliament and former
employees of security institutions, and journalists are mysteriously disappearing and being murdered.

For all these, what has the Taliban's response been?

Rejection, denial, and coercion.

Where does the Taliban get its strength and courage? Who is playing a double game with the people of Afghanistan in their support? Who supports them?

The United Nations is the only international authority that brings together the majority of countries in the world and issues numerous declarations, resolutions and conventions every day to ensure peace and human rights and a better future for the world. Yet Afghan girls have suffered greatly in the past 17 months? The United Nations should provide answers to these questions and a real plan?

What is the practical approach of the United Nations to save Afghan women and girls from the daily injustices and human rights injustices that they suffer? To what extent are the member countries of the United Nations coordinated and united regarding the current situation in Afghanistan?

Has the Taliban ever been asked about Afghanistan's international obligations? They must be committed to, for example, Resolution 1325 women, peace and security and other political and economic conventions to which Afghanistan has joined.

The world should not forget that the security of the world is inextricably linked with the current situation in Afghanistan, so it should not be ignored. Now is the time to take practical, quick and serious steps to control the situation and bring about change in Afghanistan, and, to end this gender tragedy in Afghanistan.

The only way to save the people of Afghanistan will be the formation of an inclusive and comprehensive government with the meaningful participation of women and civil activists in the decision-making and leadership structure of the future government of Afghanistan.

I as a women demand from all organizations and educational associations to don’t put Afghan women and girls alone, support them by providing remote education opportunity and facilities.

In short, as an Afghan woman, I want answers to these questions. And I ask other women of the world to support the women of Afghanistan so that such a fate does not pass to them, and the world does not remain irresponsible like this.

Roshan Mashal a women’s human rights defender
January 24th, 2023