CONVOCATION 27 October 2024: Return Their Voice to the Afghan Women

Return Their Voice to the Afghan Women


Since the return of the Taliban to power, they have approved more than 100 edicts or laws to eliminate the rights of women and girls to education, health, liberty of expression, political representation, culture, liberty of movement and work (except in the field of health and accompanied by a masculine family member). The last law, which prohibits the feminine voice, including for reading the Koran, is an example of the degree of slavery to which the women are submitted in this country. Even sexual abuse is legal, as it permits marriage of young girls and the obligation of all women to marry against their will.

It is hard to understand that after so many deaths and suffering caused by the war to throw out the Taliban from the government in 1992, twenty years later, the same powers that tossed them out, have put them back in power. The justification that the U.S. forces left so there could be peace is not valid for the women, who continue without seeing their rights recognized, subject to a regime of slavery that makes them basically invisible and reduces their existence to a mere reproductive function.

The former Afghan Minister of Women’s Affairs, Sima Samar, in our international gathering of Women in Black against war this past September, labeled these laws as crimes against humanity. This same year the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan labeled the privation of fundamental rights and liberties of Afghan women as gender apartheid.

The declaration of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding gender apartheid as a crime against humanity will bring some security to the exiled Afghan women who will be able to avail themselves of political asylum without fear of being deported.

One cannot admit a system that submits to slavery half of its population. Any country that does not cease relations with the Taliban is an accomplice to this apartheid.

Women in Black of Madrid do not understand that Afghanistan continues to be accepted as part of the International Criminal Court, whose Rome Statute, Article 7 declares the persecution of gender as a crime against humanity. We believe, along with the Afghan lawyer, Zubaida Akbar, defender of human rights in Asia, who declared in her report to the United Nations Security Council on 8 March 2023, that the laws of the current Afghan government are the most misogynistic in the world. In view of which, we demand:

That the government of our country and the rest of the European Union break relations with the Taliban government as long it does not recognize the rights of women.

That the International Criminal Court declare that the laws and norms approved in Afghanistan against the rights of women are a crime against humanity.

That those who have promulgated the 100 laws or decrees be pursued worldwide and be brought to judgment so that their crimes against women do not remain in impunity.

Translation: Trisha Novak, USA – Yolanda Rouiller, WiB Spain


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Mujeres de Negro de Madrid

Mujeres de Negro de Madrid
En la Plaza Mayor, primera convocatoria