Malala Yousafzai has urged the world to do more to help women and girls who are forced to live under the Taliban’s ‘gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan.
The education activist, 27, has warned that females in the restrictive country are being made to live in a system of discrimination and segregation due to their gender and that the ideology is now spilling into neighbouring countries.
Just last month, the Taliban banned women from hearing each other’s voices with Afghanistan’s s minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Khalid Hanafi saying: ‘Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear.’
Speaking out prior to the release of a documentary about the oppression of Afghan women, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate told of her disbelief at the country’s latest bid to control and subjugate women.
‘Afghan women are living under a system of apartheid where every opportunity from them is taken away based on their gender,’ she told The Times.
Malala Yousafzai, 27, has warned that women and young girls are being forced to live under the Taliban’s ‘gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan
Just last month, the Taliban banned women from hearing each other’s voices. Pictured: A group of Afghan women clad in burqas walk towards a market in Ghazni, 04 August 2007
Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban women and girls from secondary education and university education
Malala also expressed her shock after the Taliban stated a condition where they would not carry out peace talks in Doha if women were in the room, which the United Nations (UN) accepted.
‘It’s just this complete shock that if the Taliban do not even tolerate women in a room in Doha, how do we expect them to listen to any of these asks regarding the right to work, the right to education, the right to public appearance?’ she said.
Afghanistan is also the only country in the world to ban women and girls from secondary education and university education – as well prohibiting them from finding work and other opportunities.
‘When we look at the scale of the oppression that Afghan women are facing, there is no legal term. There is no internationally recognised crime that can explain the intensity of it,’ she told the newspaper.
Following the meeting in Doha, the UN used the term ‘gender apartheid’ to describe the situation women are facing in Afghanistan, but to this day, little has been done to fight back against the heavy restrictions placed upon their lives.
Since the Taliban terror group took control of the nation in August 2021, after the US’ heavily criticised exit, the Taliban has worked to strip away women’s rights.
According to the UN, more than 70 decrees, directives, statements, and systemised practices have targeted what women can and can’t do.
Malala rose to fame as an education activist before she was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan when she was just 12-years-old
Taliban security personnel stand guard as an Afghan burqa-clad woman (R) walks along a street at a market in the Baharak district of Badakhshan province on February 26, 2024
Afghan women wearing burka at the market in Andkhoy, Faryab Province, Northern Afghanistan
Afghan burqa-clad women walk along a street in Kandahar on September 3, 2024
Women have already been banned from speaking loudly in their own homes, and are not allowed to be heard outside.
Women are also ordered to cover their faces ‘to avoid temptation and tempting others’, and are banned from speaking if unfamiliar men who aren’t husbands or close relatives, are present.
‘If it is necessary for women to leave their homes, they must cover their faces and voices from men’ and be accompanied by a ‘male guardian’, according to the rules approved by the Taliban’s supreme leader.
The UN reported that just 1 per cent of women believe they have influence in their communities, and that just nearly one in 10 women knows another who has tried to commit suicide since the Taliban took over.
On top of this, nearly one in five women said they hadn’t spoken to another woman outside of their immediate family in three months.
Malala rose to fame as an education activist before she was shot in the head by the Taliban in Pakistan when she was just 12-years-old.
After being treated in a critical condition she was flown back to the UK to begin her recovery and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and study at Oxford University.
She married Asser Malik, a cricket executive, in 2021 and is now executive chair of the Malala Fund, which campaigns for girls’ education around the world.
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