On International Women’s Day, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had a message for women – that they are ‘committed to providing a secure environment to deliver the legitimate needs and demands of women’.
“On the occasion of International Women’s Day, I would like to say, women have all their fundamental rights as per the Islamic rules. They can avail that. The IEA is committed to providing a secure environment to deliver their legitimate needs and demands,” Afghanistan’s Permanent Representative-Designate to the UN and the Taliban’s spokesperson Suhail Shaheen tweeted.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, I would like to say, women have all their fundamental rights as per the Islamic rules. They can avail that. The IEA is committed to providing a secure environment to deliver their legitimate needs and demands.
— Suhail Shaheen. (@suhailshaheen1) March 8, 2022
This comes less than two months after the Taliban forces used pepper spray to disperse a group of women protesting in Kabul, demanding rights to work and education, news agency AFP had reported.
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Since seizing control of Afghanistan in a stunning sweep to power last August by overthrowing a democratically elected government headed by President Ashraf Ghani, the Taliban had quashed any possibility of a woman being included in its government and imposed crippling restrictions on women. A spokesperson had also controversially said that women should only restrict themselves to giving birth to children.
Amid protests and outrage over the Taliban’s all-male government since taking over Afghanistan, Taliban spokesperson Sayed Zekrullah Hashimi, in an interview to Tolo News, had said, “A woman can’t be a minister, it is like you put something on her neck that she can’t carry.”
Also Read: | In solidarity with girls, Afghan boys refrain from going to school
Girls woke up to shut schools as the Taliban only allowed schools to reopen for boys and male teachers after forming the government last year. However, schools reopened for girls in Afghanistan’s third largest city, Herat, last November, in an apparent localised change, reported news agency Associated Press.
The Taliban’s speedy takeover of Kabul and Afghanistan prompted an unprecedented exodus of people who left their country overnight to escape another brutal regime. Heartbreaking visuals emerged from airports and land borders as people, desperate to flee, were separated from families. Some were even killed.