Taliban chief claims women have better rights now than under previous governments
Hibatullah Akhundzada, Taliban's reculsive supreme leader
Taliban's supreme leaderHibatullah Akhundzada has claimed that his hardline regime has ensured the rights of girls and women better than any previous governments, according to a report in The Independent.
Akhundzada claimed that his regime has done away with the practice of forcefully marrying off women and widows.
“We have issued a six-principle decree regarding women’s rights. The previous governments have not provided the rights of women. We said don’t marry women by force, don’t violate mahr [amount paid by groom to the bride at the time of marriage as a traditional gift], don’t force women for nikah, don’t marry a widow by force. We give women the heritage,” saidAkhundzada.
The Taliban boss also lauded his regime for not implementing the Islamic punishment method of Hudud in which the accused are subjected to amputation, flogging, stoning and death for crimes deemed extreme. The practice was predominantly in place during Taliban's previous regime in the 1990s.
However, despite his claims, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW) has stated that the reality on the ground remains completely different.
"What we know from their conduct on the ground is that there are credible reports of serious increases in child and forced marriage since the Taliban took over,”Heather Barr, associate director of women’s rights division at HRW told the outlet.
“We also know that widows – and women in general – have almost no access to justice, so any rights they might have on paper are virtually meaningless," she added.
Notably, immediately after Taliban 2.0 came to power in August 2021, the girls and women in the country were thrown out of schools and workplaces. Last month, the United Nations in its report said the Taliban administration was sendingwomen to prisons to protect them from gender-based violence.
According to the report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the Taliban send women to prisons if they have no male relatives to stay with or if the male relatives are considered unsafe.
Also read |Afghanistan: Taliban sending women to prisons to protect them from gender-based violence, says report
"The most-reported types of complaints of gender-based violence against women and girls lodged with the de facto police, prosecution units, and courts were murder, including murder perpetrated for reasons of so-called 'honour',rape, causing injury or disability, and depriving a woman of inheritance," the report said.
Citing the Taliban, the UNAMA report said that women were sent to prisons for their protection “akin to how prisons have been used to accommodate drug addicts and homeless people in Kabul".
(With inputs from agencies)