Kabul, Afghanistan
Reuters
Afghan broadcaster Tolo News on Wednesday aired an all-female panel in its studio with an audience of women to mark International Women’s Day, a rare broadcast since the Taliban took over and many female journalists left the profession or started working off-air.
A survey by Reporters Without Borders last year found that more than 75 per cent of female journalists had lost their jobs since the Taliban took over as foreign forces withdrew in August, 2021.
A female presenter for Tolo News, Khatereh Ahmadi, while covering her face, works in a newsroom at Tolo TV station in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 22nd May, 2022. PICTURE: Reuters/Ali Khara/File photo.
With surgical masks covering their faces, the panel of three women and one female moderator on Wednesday evening discussed the topic of the position of women in Islam.
“A woman has rights from an Islamic point of view…it is her right to be able to work, to be educated,” said journalist Asma Khogyani during the panel.
The Taliban last year restricted most girls from high school, women from university and stopped most Afghan female NGO workers.
Another panellist, former university professor Zakira Nabil said women would continue to find ways to learn and work.
“Whether you want it or not, women exist in this society…if it’s not possible to get an education at school, she will learn knowledge at home,” she told the panel.
Due to growing restrictions as well as the country’s severe economic crisis, the International Labour Organisation said female employment had fallen 25 per cent last year since mid-2021. It added that more women were turning to self-employed work such as tailoring at home.
The United Nation’s Mission to Afghanistan on Wednesday called on the Taliban to reverse restrictions on the rights of girls and women, calling them “distressing.”
The Taliban have said they respect women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture and that authorities have set up a committee to examine perceived issues in order to work towards re-opening girls’ schools.
Meanwhile, the UN envoy in Afghanistan warned on Wednesday that a Taliban administration crackdown on women’s rights is likely to lead to a drop in aid and development funding in the country, where women fear being cut from public life as much as violent death.
The United Nations has made its single-largest country aid appeal ever, asking for $US4.6 billion in 2023 to deliver help in Afghanistan, where two-thirds of the population – some 28 million people – need it to survive, said Roza Otunbayeva.
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But she told the UN Security Council that providing that assistance had been put at risk by Taliban administration bans on women attending high school and university, visiting parks and working for aid groups. Women are also not allowed to leave the home without a male relative and must cover their faces.
“Funding for Afghanistan is likely to drop if women were not allowed to work,” Otunbayeva said. “If the amount of assistance is reduced, then the amount of US dollar cash shipments required to support that assistance will also decline.”
She said discussions about providing more development-style help for things like small infrastructure projects or policies to combat effects of climate change had halted over the bans.
An Afghan woman and a girl walk in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 9th November, 2022. PICTURE: Reuters/Ali Khara
The Taliban administration, which seized power in August 2021 as US-led forces withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, says it respects women’s rights in accordance with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
“They systematically deprive women and girls of their fundamental human rights,” United Arab Emirates UN Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh said. “These decisions have nothing to do with Islam or Afghan culture and risk further entrenching the country’s international isolation.”
Otunbayeva said that while some Afghan women initially said they welcomed the Taliban coming to power because it ended the war, they quickly began to lose hope.
“They say their elimination from public life is no better than fearing violent death,” Otunbayeva told the Security Council meeting on Afghanistan, which coincided with International Women’s Day.
“Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights,” she said. “It is difficult to understand how any government worthy of the name can govern against the needs of half of its population.”
– With MICHELLE NICHOLS
